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Providing better daycare would go a long way to boosting the economy,
says the founder of Body Shop Canada.
Women's work careers often get disrupted when they step aside to
take care of their children, said Margot Franssen, who will be in
Halifax on Wednesday to speak at a fundraiser for Alice Housing, which
provides safe housing and counselling for women and children leaving
domestic violence.
"If we had a fantastic childcare system in this country,
something like they've offered the women in Quebec, then that would go a
long way to solving the problem," Franssen said in a recent telephone
interview.
"Nobody wants to put their kids into shabby daycare."
The former Liberal government had struck deals with the provinces
for a $5-billion national daycare program to increase spaces and
overhaul Canada's dismal international standing when it comes to early
learning. But Conservatives scrapped those plans when they took power in
2006 in favour of tax cuts and a $100-per-child monthly subsidy for
families with preschoolers.
"How far does $100 get you?" Franssen said of the monthly
payments.
"What the hell were they thinking? That's 10 hours of a teenage
babysitter.... I think they deliberately did it to sabotage us."
Federal Tories are "still in the mindset" that new moms can get
help with their children from their neighbours and families, she said.
"But the fact is that families are split up all over Canada.
Somebody gets a job in Vancouver. Somebody else gets a job in Saskatoon.
There isn't that extended family anymore to help," Franssen said.
"And I'm not giving my kids over to a neighbour that has 10 kids
in her basement. These kids are the future of Canada. They're going to
take over after our retirement, for God's sake. We need to be cautious
about how we're raising them."
Franssen, who founded Body Shop Canada three decades ago and sold
it in 2004, campaigned through her business from 1994 until 2004 to
stop violence against women.
That started with a drive to end child poverty in Canada, she
said.
"Why were these kids living in poverty? Because their mothers
were poor. Why were their mothers poor? Because they were marginalized
in society," she said.
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- reprinted from The Chronicle Herald