Martin pledges to expand daycare plan
CHILD CARE PM criticizes Tory promise of cash Ottawa has deals with provinces
SAINT JOHN, N. B.—
Likening child care to medicare, Paul Martin wants to make the Liberals’ fiveyear, $5 billion daycare program a permanent feature of Canadian life at a cost of an extra $6 billion by 2015.
“ Affordable child care” is “ here to stay” and will be “ a lasting addition to our social foundation,” the Prime Minister declared yesterday as he announced the campaign promise at a daycare centre in Saint John, N. B.
“ This is an initiative that we believe, without any shadow of a doubt, will stand the test of time and will make a real and lasting difference in the lives of our children and in our communities.” The pledge, the first new Liberal proposal of the campaign, would mean federal funding of $ 1.2 billion a year going to the provinces for child care after the current program expires in five years.
Martin said the extension of the program was requested by community groups and provincial governments, all of which have signed agreements with Ottawa in the past 17 months to develop early learning and daycare programs.
In Ontario’s case, the plan is to create 25,000 new regulated child- care spaces by early 2008. The Liberals also promised to add daycare expansion projects to the list of projects available for funding under Ottawa’s multibillion program of urban infrastructure grants.
Martin slammed Conservative Leader Stephen Harper’s daycare plan, saying it would provide inadequate support for parents and inferior quality daycare. The Tory plan, at a cost of $ 10.9 billion over five years, would give families $ 1,200 annually for each child, with parents given the choice of how to spend the money. As well, the Conservatives would provide $250 million a year to employers and communities to create 125,000 new child- care spots a year.
“ Mr. Harper is saying that he is providing money, but what he is really saying is, ‘ I will give you $25 which you can use over a week for child care.’
“ That, in many cases, barely pays for one day,” Martin told reporters. “The second thing that he ( Harper) is saying is, ‘ You don’t have to put that money into child care because I don’t believe in government- supported child care.’
“ Then at the same time, he’s saying, ‘I’ll put up a certain amount of money for child- care spaces,’ but he’s saying, ‘ I’ll put up an empty box,’ ” Martin said. “ There’s going to be no early learning, no regulation, no insistence on high quality. So it’s simply an empty box.
“ That’s not a child- care plan. What it really is, maybe, is a kind of baby bonus but that’s it.” The Liberals have promised a national daycare program in every election campaign since 1993.
Progress has been made only in the last year or so.
Later, after chatting with children at a daycare centre in Pooles Corner, P. E. I., Martin invoked the memory of his father, Paul Martin Sr., as well as that of former Saskatchewan premier Tommy Douglas and former prime minister Lester Pearson — all considered fathers of medicare — to explain his zeal for a national, regulated program for children. What if, Martin wondered aloud, 40 years ago his father, Douglas and subsequently Pearson, had said, “ We don’t need health insurance, we don’t need medicare — I’ll tell you what, I’m going to give you $25 and you go shift for yourself?
“ Where would we be today if that’s what those people had done?
“ That’s not my idea of Canada.”