The Premier Got the $10-a-Day Daycare Spot. Your Family Got the Waitlist.

David Eby has now confirmed the uncomfortable fact at the centre of B.C.’s childcare debate: his own family has benefited from a $10-a-day childcare space at a YMCA. The Canadian Press account carried by Fraser Valley Today says Eby made the admission at a Delta campaign event, after Conservatives pressed him on the optics of using a scarce subsidized space while other parents remain stuck on waitlists.

This is not an argument about Eby’s children, and it is not an accusation that his family broke a rule. Families who are offered affordable care take it. The accountability question is simpler and tougher: why is the Premier personally benefiting from a promise his government has still not made reliably available to British Columbian families?

The government’s own $10-a-day program page says access to an approved centre is based on a location’s licensed capacity and waitlist. That sentence is the whole problem. The program sounds universal in campaign language, but in real life it functions like a golden ticket. If a parent lands in the right centre, the household budget changes overnight. If not, the parent keeps paying far more or keeps waiting.

Budget 2026 made the gap even harder to spin. The province said it would pause enrolment of new providers into both the Operating Funding Model and the $10 a Day ChildCareBC program during a “stabilization” period, while families and providers already inside the $10-a-day program would see no change. In plain English: the families already holding the ticket keep it, while many families outside the gate are told to wait.

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ 2026 fee report shows why that matters. It found B.C. cities were the country’s laggards on childcare fees: infant fees ranged from $28 a day in Kelowna to $52 a day in Richmond, while preschool-age fees ranged from $24 to $42 a day. The report also says B.C. parents now pay the highest infant-space fees in the country.

Eby’s response, according to the CP account, was to say the NDP is committed to expanding childcare and is focusing next on before- and after-school care. But that does not answer the parent of a toddler looking for a space now, or the family paying thousands more per year because they did not win the $10-a-day lottery.

The fair standard is not whether the Premier’s family was allowed to use the program. It is whether the Premier can look at parents outside that program and show a credible path to the same relief. Until then, every campaign line about affordability runs into the same locked door.