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EXCERPTS
The federal government wrestled with ways to suppress the recommendations of its own advisory committee on child care that said employment insurance benefits paid to new parents should eventually be extended to 2½ years, newly released documents suggest.
According to documents obtained by The Globe and Mail under Access to Information legislation, nationwide consultations conducted by the Human Resources Department last year found a shortage of child-care spaces for very young children - a gap that could be filled with an extension in EI.
The documents also show that Human Resources Minister Monte Solberg received hundreds of letters from working parents urging him to move forward on the committee's proposals.
"What can I do as a citizen in order to ensure that the recommendations for the Report from the Ministerial Advisory Committee on the Government of Canada's Child Care Spaces Initiative (January 2007) are approved and implemented," wrote one unidentified mother who detailed her fruitless search for care for her baby.
The report of the committee headed by Gordon Chong - a group handpicked by the Conservative government - was released to the public in April of 2007, four months after its completion. It recommended that parental benefits offered under the EI program be increased to 18 months from the current 50 weeks and that they eventually be extended to 2½ years.
Mr. Chong argued that the transition from infant to toddler takes place at about 18 months, that child-care experts say there is much beneficial bonding between parents and their children in the first half of the second year of life, and that, if parents stayed home longer, it would free child-care spaces for other children. In addition, he pointed out, child-care spaces for infants are much more costly than for older preschoolers.
Mr. Solberg said at the time that the report would inform the discussion around child care, but his government had no immediate plans to implement its recommendations.
Still, the access documents obtained by The Globe suggest the struggle to keep questions about the report from causing trouble for the government continued for some months. As late as September of last year - six months after the report was made public - the Human Resources Department was still devising media lines for the minister to use "if pressed on whether or not Canada's new government would implement other committee recommendations."
The minister was advised to point out that the government was putting aside $250-million annually for child-care space creation, that it was providing Canadians with choice in child care, and that it was delivering a child-care benefit of $1,200 to parents for each child under six years old.
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But the documents show that the government has been told that parents who must return to work 50 weeks after the birth of a child have limited options in terms of child care.
"Though there may be a surplus of toddler and pre-school spaces in some jurisdictions, in most cases there is a shortage of spaces for infants and children with special needs," says a summary of consultations conducted in 2006.
"Spaces for infants and special needs children represent a specific challenge in all jurisdictions because of their higher costs. The child/staff ratio for infants is lower than for other children and they require specialized equipment."
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The documents show that, as of April last year, more than 675 people had written to the minister to express their views.
Among them was an unidentified woman who told Mr. Solberg how disappointed she was that the advisory committee recommendations would not be implemented. "The recommendations make so much sense, especially considering the huge surpluses that the EI program generates," she wrote.
The department responded by explaining that the EI surplus is just an accounting method and that the surpluses are rolled into general revenues.
- reprinted from the Globe and Mail