No savings from daycare decision

Re: “Panel forbids new daycare in Westmount” (Montreal Gazette, Aug. 15)

I read with astonishment of a committee’s refusal to recommend a daycare permit for an applicant in Westmount. I thought it must be because the daycare would be heavily subsidized and the committee was being prudent.

But it would actually be a private daycare, and the only fiscal reason that comes across from the families minister’s office is that even non-subsidized daycares represent some cost to the government due to the tax credits parents can claim on daycare fees.

If parents have to send their kids far down the traffic nightmare that is Sherbrooke St. to go to daycare, isn’t that tax credit still applicable to them?

So, where are the savings to the government? It would appear the government simply wants to deter parents in Westmount from sending their kids to daycare — as if none of the moms there work and are in need of such services. Besides, shouldn’t the market determine where a private enterprise will succeed? And would the same argument about tax credits as a government burden apply to private home care nursing agencies? Are their numbers to be curtailed because of the “cost to the government” of home care expense tax credits?

What’s more, if the government projects that in the future fewer daycare spaces will be needed in Westmount, their own curtailment of daycare services there will make it a self-fulfilling prophesy, as a lack of spaces will be less attractive to young families.

This is an outright silly ruling, and I would be tempted to question whether it is in fact discriminatory.

Mary Stark-Peng, Beaconsfield