PCs announce tax-rebate plan for child care

Ontario’s Progressive Conservatives announced Saturday that, if elected in the province’s spring election, they will cover up to $6,750 of child-care costs for families through a tax-rebate program.

Tory MPP Laurie Scott announced the plan in a media release, which promises tax breaks for multiple forms of care, including babysitters, nannies, licensed operators and independent child-care providers. Low-income families would receive 75 per cent of their child-care costs back, at a maximum of $6,750; higher-income families would receive an incrementally lower rate, bottoming out at 26 per cent of child-care costs for families earning $150,000 or more.

The Tories estimate their plan — which would cover multiple forms of child care for kids up to the age of 15 — will cost $389 million annually. The plan is simi- lar to the one proposed by the PCs in November, when the now-ousted leader Patrick Brown produced a 78-page platform dubbed “The People’s Guarantee.”

The pledge comes one month after Premier Kathleen Wynne released the Liberal party’s child-care plan, which would provide free care for preschoolers aged 2 1⁄2 and older, until they reach kindergarten.

The New Democrats say they would provide free child care for all families earning less than $40,000 a year, and would aim to have child-care costs averaging $12 per day for all other families.

The Tories say their plan to offer relief through tax rebates is better, because it puts money back into the hands of Ontarians.

But Linda White, a child-care policy expert and University of Toronto professor, said the mix of a rebate and a lack of funding for new spaces could cause concerns over whether demand will outpace supply.

“It’s not clear how this would spur demand for child care and what impact that would have,” said White, who has similar concerns for the NDP plan. “If it increases demand, without addressing the scarcity of supply, then what, in fact, it could do is drive up prices.”