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Calling what the Conservatives are doing "universal child care" is like calling Mike Harris' landlords' bill of rights "the Tenant Protection Act." It's a cruel joke on Canadian parents who are desperate to find quality, affordable care for their children &emdash; both to allow them to work and to foster the early development of their children. That said, even on its own terms &emdash; as a straight up payment of $3.28 a day to parents of young children &emdash; the Harperites' cheques for children scheme is a huge failure.
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The non-partisan Caledon Institute on Social Policy has calculated that "an Ontario two-earner couple with net family income of $30,000 will end up with just $199" after the cut in their CCTB and taxes are taken into account. In case you're wondering, that brings the value of the benefit down to 54 cents a day. That won't even buy you a cup of coffee, let alone child care.
Let's not forget that your 54 cents per day is coming at the expense of a much-delayed child-care program that actually showed some promise. After more than a decade of promises, the Liberals were finally delivering new money to create child-care spaces. Now, the Conservatives say that their plan will create child-care spaces as well. But, their plan to give $10,000 incentives to employers who create child-care spaces has been tried before in Ontario, where it was an unmitigated disaster. Mike Harris offered employers $10 million in incentives between 1998 and 2004, but less than $500,000 was utilized before the program was discontinued.
The Ottawa Citizen obtained a copy of the Reformatories' briefing book on this subject and it showed that they are very much aware that their approach won't work. Besides citing the Ontario failure, the book notes that "employer-sponsored child care accounted for only about three per cent of the almost 600,000 child-care spaces across Canada in 2000." It also said provinces that have introduced incentives to expand employer-supported child care have had limited success, and that the take up of tax incentives has been "extremely low."
So, what are the consequences of the Harper government's actions? Besides the fact that you might have some extra change rattling around in your pocket, you'll have to look even harder before finding a child-care space.
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- reprinted from rabble.ca