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First, let's make sure that we get some terminology right. War is not peace. Freedom is not slavery. Ignorance is not strength. And, regardless of what our new Conservative Ministry of Truth says, a taxable allowance of $100 a month for each child under six is not "a child care plan."
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Moreover, by unilaterally cancelling the five-year agreements that the federal government had signed with the provinces, the Conservatives are denying parents the ability to access the quality regulated child care that they want and need (something that the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child lists as one of the fundamental rights all children should enjoy).
Public statements made by Harper and several of his ministers indicate that they really don't have a clue about the value of quality child care. The Conservatives label licensed child-care providers as "institutions" and make ridiculous assertions like "We certainly don't want the federal government to tell us how to raise our children." and "The best people to raise children are the parents" (as if parents looking for child care were guilty of abandoning their children to the state).
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We shouldn't let the Liberals off the hook for this pending disaster. If they had delivered, even partially, on a national child care program after promising it in 1993 (or 1997 or even 2000), the program would be so well established by now that it would be virtually impossible for a new government to pull the plug, no matter how ideologically hostile they were to the idea of government-funded child-care programs.
Instead, they waited until the dying days of their regime to put child-care money into the budget and to finally begin making agreements with the provinces. That made child care an inviting target for the dinosaurs in the Conservative Party. And, because the program was just being rolled out, voters didn't have a real sense of what we'd be losing.
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In 1874, when Prime Minister Alexander MacKenzie came into power in the wake of the Pacific Scandal, he didn't order the tracks of the partially built Canadian Pacific Railway to be torn up. Doing so would have been a complete breach of trust with the Canadian people and with the government of British Columbia, which had entered Confederation on the condition that the transcontinental railway would be completed.
While the building of the CPR was plagued with scandals and mismanagement, and strongly identified with the discredited government of John A. MacDonald, the newly elected government recognized that it was too important to the future of the country to play politics with it.
Equally, it would make no sense to tear apart a national child-care program just as it is finally being built.
- reprinted from rabble.ca