Eby takes a $10-a-day daycare spot he froze for everyone else
The B.C. premier says his family donated the discount back but will not say how much or whether a tax receipt was issued. The admission comes with about 18,000 subsidized spaces and expansion paused until 2029.
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Article by Rebel News staff.
Tonight on The Ezra Levant Show: British Columbia's premier built and then froze a program that reaches only one in 10 child-care spaces, and he is holding one of those scarce spots for his own family, a seven-word admission that could shape the final days of his campaign.
B.C.'s $10-a-day child care was the NDP's signature promise in the 2017 election. Nine years later, about 10 per cent of the province's licensed spaces, roughly 18,000, carry the $10 rate. The other 90 per cent of parents pay market prices in the country's most expensive province for child care, which advocates put at $40 to $100 a day per child. This spring, David Eby's government announced a three-year pause on expansion, with no new $10-a-day sites until at least 2029. Voters go to the polls on October 24.
On Monday morning, at a campaign stop in Delta, Global BC's Jordan Armstrong asked Eby whether his family used the program. "Yes. My family has. Yes," he replied. Armstrong followed up, asking about the optics of benefiting "from a program that very few people have access to, and one that you won't expand." On video, Eby did not answer.
Hours later, the BC NDP issued a statement on his behalf. "My family has benefited from a wonderful local childcare centre," it said, explaining that the centre one of his children already attended was designated a $10-a-day site a couple of years ago. "When that occurred, we chose as a family to make a donation to that excellent facility," because they "felt that we did not need that discount." In Vancouver on Tuesday, reporters asked how much he gave and whether he received a charitable tax receipt. "We paid the difference between what it was before and what it was after the $10-a-day daycare," Eby said. He has not disclosed the amount, and no receipt has been made public.
The household can afford the full fee. The premier's salary is about $227,000 a year, and his wife, Cailey Lynch, is a physician. Nothing in the rules barred the family from the spot. The program is not means-tested, and when a centre joins, every enrolled child converts to the $10 rate automatically. No one has alleged Eby jumped a queue. Even Conservative candidate Margareta Dovgal, leading the attack, began by saying "Nobody begrudges David Eby and his wife for their success."
The objection is that the premier who designed the program and capped it is now one of its beneficiaries. "What families will not accept is a Premier who promised them $10-a-day child care, failed to deliver it, and then took one of the scarce spots for himself while a single mom working two jobs sits on a waitlist," Dovgal said. A family that truly did not need the discount could have released the spot to the next family on the waitlist. Eby kept it and made a donation he has not documented. If the centre is a registered charity, that gift may have generated a tax receipt, meaning taxpayers could have absorbed part of it, a question only Eby can settle.
Criticism has come from beyond his opponents. Hamish Telford, a political scientist at the University of the Fraser Valley, told the CBC: "It looks like the privileged are getting a privilege, and that never, never looks well on a politician." Vancouver Sun columnist Rob Shaw headlined his column "Eby's $10-a-day child-care spot reeks of hypocrisy."
The episode follows a familiar pattern on the left. In June 1990, the Toronto Star reported that city councillor Jack Layton and school trustee Olivia Chow were paying about $800 a month for a three-bedroom unit in the Hazelburn Co-op, federally subsidized housing near Dundas and Jarvis, on a reported combined income of about $120,000. Police found no wrongdoing, and co-op rules allowed higher-income tenants. The couple began paying an extra $325 a month and later bought a house in Chinatown. Chow, who has insisted she "paid market rent," faces re-election as Toronto mayor on October 26.
In 2005, former Liberal cabinet minister David Dingwall resigned as president of the Royal Canadian Mint over his office's expenses and told a Commons committee, "I am entitled to my entitlements, and if that includes severance, so be it." An arbitrator later awarded him $417,780.
Eby's discount is worth roughly $600 to $1,800 a month, small for a household of his means and large for the parents still waiting. A leaders' debate is scheduled this week, and the outstanding question is whether anyone asks Eby for the receipt.
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COMMENTS
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Susan Ashbrook commented 2026-10-14 22:12:55 -0400 FlagI’m entitled to my entitlements too… just seems that all I’m entitled to is paying for the entitlements of Liberals, NDPers and other elitists.
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Bernhard Jatzeck commented 2026-10-14 21:12:00 -0400 FlagOh, c’mon, man. Eby’s entitled to his entitlements…… -
Bruce Atchison commented 2026-10-14 20:40:56 -0400 FlagBoth segments tonight are about lawlessness and lack of morality. The ZiZians and Eby both place themselves as administrators of their own prideful morality rather than true concern for others. Neither do either have the fear of God.
