The BC Conservatives have been silent in this campaign on if they would reverse their historic opposition to the BC NDP’s child care fee caps, and Conservative platform chair Gavin Dew recently acknowledged, “we haven’t established a fee cap presently.” (Global, Oct 6, 2026)

The B.C. NDP’s fee reduction initiative has reduced average childcare fees by 50% - about $7,200 a year. Eliminating the cap or reducing subsidies would cost parents thousands of dollars a year.

But just three weeks ago, Conservative Child Care Critic Heather Maahs tweeted “exactly right” in response to a post calling for subsidized spaces to be replaced with a tax credit for each child.

She has said “$10 a day daycare is an abject failure, boondoggle… at what cost?”

Maahs believes government-funded child care is an “attempt to reshape” the role of parents in the lives of their children, and “steer” children away from parents and towards government care:

"We've discussed billions of dollars in public spending on childcare programs including the $10/day initiative and the rapid expansion of institutionalized daycare spaces across the province. What has become clear is that this policy direction is not simply about helping families, it reflects a deeper ideology assumption about what childcare should be and who should provide it. The current system privileges one model of care above all others, licensed institutional daycare and channels the overwhelming majority of public funding towards that model, yet most families in British Columbia continue to rely on other forms of care, parental care, care by relatives, flexible arrangements, and community-based support. When government structures funding in a way that excludes most families from support, it sends a message about what choices are valued and which are not."

"Why should some families receive thousands of dollars in subsidies while others receive nothing simply because their preferred form of care is not one favoured by government policy? Public policy should not be driven by ideology."

"Parents are not simply consumers of government programs, they're primary caregivers and the most important support in a child's life. Any childcare policy should recognize and respect that reality rather than attempt to reshape it."

"Parents are not secondary participants in their children’s lives. They are primary caregivers. They are the foundation of healthy families and healthy communities. Public policy should support families in all their diversity, not attempt to steer them toward a single government-preferred model of care." (Video) (Transcript)