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EXCERPTS
Like the other famous five promises of the Conservative government, the wrongly called "child-care" policy is good politics but lousy policy.
The Conservatives, you might recall, pledged to give all families $1,200 per child under 6. They called it the Choice in Child Care Allowance. The money, according to their campaign platform, "will let parents choose the child-care option that best suits their family's needs."
It will do nothing of the kind. Simple math shows why.
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The excellent Caledon Institute reckons that a two-earner couple earning $36,000 -- just above the poverty line -- would see only $420 of the $1,200 because the couple would lose other social benefits.
That would work out to about $1.60 a day.
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What we have in this Choice in Child Care Allowance is a modern equivalent in concept to the old, long-abandoned family allowances. These monthly cheques were sent by Ottawa to mothers -- the money went to the woman in the family -- and they proved politically very popular.
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The Conservatives have figured out that jigging around with tax policy doesn't win votes, unless people can finger the money. Change tax brackets. Who understands that? Alter corporate tax rates. Who likes corporations anyway?
But give people a cheque. Now there's something they can put in their hands and spend.
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You can argue either way what a child-care policy should be.
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But you cannot claim that $1.50-to-$4-a-day per child is a plan, or even part of a plan for something called child care. You can call it a smokescreen. You can dress it up, as Republicans would in the United States, as a gesture toward "family values." You can make the ideological case that it at least avoids state control.
You just can't call it serious child-care policy.
- reprinted from the Globe and Mail