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As the federal Conservatives prepare to cut the first $100 child-care cheque, Kingston is on the verge of finally putting $2.3 million received from the defeated Liberals last year to use in local day cares.
The city has been sitting on the money, which it got from the previous Liberal government in accordance with the Grits' proposed national day-care program, for some time.
Before Stephen Harper's Conservatives came to power and cancelled the day-care program in February, city officials had been drafting a plan that outlined the creation and sustainability of 160 new child-care spaces based on millions of dollars coming in annually under the previous government's program.
Lance Thurston, the city's community development manager, told The Whig-Standard yesterday that that plan has been readjusted to detail how the lone $2.3-million payment will be spent.
"We've reduced the target number [of 160], it will be substantially lower than that," Thurston said.
The $2.3 million will be used more as a "one-shot deal," Thurston said, so they're cautioning child-care centres that will benefit from the money that any spaces they create with the funds won't be sustained by the city over time.
The city would have to raise taxes, or day cares would have to raise fees, to keep their resources at the levels they would have been under the long-term Liberal program, Thurston said.
"The last thing we want is to raise expectations and then have the money stop."
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- reprinted from the Kingston Whig-Standard