Who cares most for child care?
CHILD CARE
OTTAWA— The Liberals and Conservatives are out to show that this holiday election campaign, like Christmas, is for children.
Conservative Leader Stephen Harper is promising to hand a $1,200-a- year payment to all Canadian families for each child under the age of 6, no matter whether they stay at home or are sent to daycare. Prime Minister Paul Martin, hot on the Tories’ heels, will announce today that he’s doubling his five- year, $5-billion childcare program, which is aimed at helping parents who use institutional daycare. It will now be a
10- year project. The provinces are said to be on side, according to Canadian Press. The five- year Tory plan would cost $ 10.9 billion, compared to about $ 10 billion for the Liberal plan, but the difference between the parties’ child- care programs rests mainly in ideology. While the Liberals’ funds would mainly support preschool programs outside the home, the Conservatives would put $ 1,200 in the hands of parents every year for each child under 6, regardless of where they get their care. A Conservative government would also set up a $250 million annual fund for tax credits to businesses and community groups that build daycare facilities, which Harper said would help create an additional 125,000 spaces.
“ It’s hard enough to be a parent, but government should support your choices, not limit them. In fact the only people who should be making these choices are parents, not politicians, not the government,” Harper told reporters at a privately owned children’s play centre in suburban Ottawa. Martin’s government has signed child-care agreements with all 10 provinces, in which it has committed to giving them $5 billion over five years to create more daycare spaces. Harper said that if elected, he would honour existing childcare agreements Ottawa has signed with the provinces over the last 18 months, but only for the first year.
“ After one year we will be terminating the agreements and moving to our own child- care plan . . . we concluded that this structure was the fairest, this structure allows every family to get money,” he said, adding that the new benefit would be added to other tax measures like the Child Tax Credit, and would be taxed on the basis of whichever parent’s salary is lowest.
Martin said the Tory initiative was inadequate because it lacked quality standards and would provide only $25 a week on average to families. “An awful lot of Canadians spend that in a day on child care,” the Prime Minister told reporters in Newfoundland. “With every passing day, the very clear clash of values between Mr. Harper and myself, and the Conservatives and ourselves, becomes manifest.” A prominent child- care advocate agreed the plan flows from a sharply different philosophy than the current government’s policy.
“ This is a child- care proposal for people who are opposed to the idea of child care . . . giving people a cash payment simply isn’t child care,” said Martha Friendly, a University of Toronto professor and a leading expert on child- care policy and research. “ I’m not opposed to income security, but how does this translate in reality? How would you know, there’s no provision for evaluating the policy’s effects.”
Social Development Minister Ken Dryden said the Tory plan amounts to a philosophical statement that “ government is no good.”
“ It is a modest financial benefit to families, but it is not child care, it is not even very much babysitting. Clearly what it suggests is that child care is not important” to the Tories, Dryden told reporters in a conference call. Dryden said the Liberal plan would provide increased options even for stay- at- home parents who wish to send their children to educational programs on a part- time basis, but that massive investments are needed to elevate the quality of daycare facilities and increase the number of spaces.
Recent statistics show that in Ontario, more than half of families with young children use some form of full- time daycare, and, Dryden said, both spouses work in 70 per cent of families with young children. Dryden said it costs $ 8,000 a year per child for full- time daycare in Canada. The average child-care expense in Canada ( covering all kinds of child care) is $ 2,600 a year. Harper derided the Liberal plan as “ the Henry Ford model of child care: you can choose any colour you like, so long as it’s black.
“ You choose any child care you like, so long as it’s 9- to- 5 institutional care. But who speaks for shift workers, who speaks for the low-income parent who cannot afford institutional care? Who speaks for rural Canadians?” he said, adding “ instead of large benefits for the few, we need some government support for everyone.” But Friendly said the Conservative plan would essentially cripple the country’s early childhood education strategy.
Ontario, Quebec and Manitoba have signed funding agreements with Ottawa, and under Harper’s plan the money would stop flowing in the 2006-07 budget year. “Those provinces would be crazy to go ahead with anything. Where would the money come from? We might as well cut off the money next month if all they’re going to honour is the first year . . . this is the beginning of the program, not the end,” said Friendly, who is coordinator of the U of T’s childcare resource and research unit. However, those who favour more flexibility for stay- athome parents hailed the plan.
“ This is what the children of Canada need . . . I don’t think I’ve ever voted Conservative in my life, but I will now,” said Kate Tennier, founder of Advocates for Childcare Choice, a Toronto group. “ Stephen Harper is sticking up for children in this country, and Paul Martin isn’t.”
Tennier said that there is no evidence that programs like the Liberals’ actually work — a charge hotly disputed by childcare researchers. NDP Leader Jack Layton panned both of his opponents’ approaches to child care. He said Martin’s program has only come about because of the NDP.
“ When it comes to Mr. Martin, he’s been making promises about child care since 1993,” he said.
“ The only time that any of the promises began to come through was when he had a minority Parliament and the NDP made sure that the budget was approved and passed.”
Layton is expected to introduce the NDP child- care platform in the coming days.