It’s going take $158 million per year to bring childcare in the Capital Region to an acceptable level, according to a new report by the Regional Child Care Council.

“It’s not a quick fix and it’s not cheap,” said Jan White, a member of the RCCC and a co-ordinator with Partners in Learning and Advocacy for Young Children, the child-care advocacy group that sponsored the report.

“What we’re hoping to do (is) inform governments about the complexity of the system and what it would cost our region.”

The report, called Building on our strengths: a child care plan for Victoria, concludes there’s a need for 24,446 licensed spaces in Greater Victoria. Only 10,653 currently exist.

The projected figure includes a mix of full-time and part-time care for kids ranging in age from infants to 12 year olds.

“It’s about the whole full-meal deal,” White said, adding a funded system should include a range of options for parents.

Currently, parents pay about 70 per cent of the cost of child care with government funding the remainder. Those figures should be reversed for childcare to be affordable, the report recommends.

“As a parent with three kids, last year alone I paid over $10,000 for a full-day program and opportunity to have after-school care,” White said. “I think the costs are real.”

In its report, RCCC sets the cost of full-time care for a child aged three to five at $8,960 per year. The number is comparable to what B.C. spends per pupil for a 10-month term at school, $8,078.

The cost estimate includes a raise for staff from $18 to $25 per hour -- a change needed to attract and retain adequately trained people, the report argues.

The research was based on figures from other jurisdictions offering publicly-funded child care, said Lynell Anderson, report author and senior researcher with the Early Learning and Child Care Research Unit at HELP in Vancouver.

“The (Regional Child Care Council) feels very committed to providers in the area, so the plan says we build from what already exists in the community,” Anderson said.

The plan is also flexible enough that it could help inform the government’s research into expanding kindergarten for three to five year olds, she added.

The Ministry of Education will publish the results of its summer consultations on kindergarten by the end of 2008.

To read the report, visit www.playvictoria.org and click on Greater Victoria Regional Child Care Plan.

rholmen@saanichnews.com