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Alberta's political leaders are battling for the votes of working parents with young children through a flurry of promises aimed at giving daycare workers better wages and increasing the number of available spots.
Daycare is a simmering issue in Alberta's major centres, where parents struggle just to find space for their children and then face rates that in some cases have jumped to nearly $1,000 a month per child.
The Alberta Liberals were the latest to release their daycare platform Tuesday in the lead-up to the March 3 provincial election.
Their plan would boost daycare wages by up to 30 per cent "to relieve the crippling labour shortage plaguing daycare centres across the province," said Alberta Liberal Leader Kevin Taft.
The platform also includes a plan to forgive student loans for workers who remain in Alberta to work in daycare for three years after graduating.
"We are in a crisis in child care," said Weslyn Mather, the Liberal incumbent in Edmonton-Mill Woods who helped craft their daycare policy.
Mather says increasing daycare wages at a cost of $40 million per year will ease the pressure on daycare owners facing rising costs.
"The current wage right now for Level 1 daycare workers is $8 to $10, and we are going to add $2 to that," she said. "But for Level 3, the highest level, the increase would be $5 per hour."
Taft also couldn't resist taking a shot at the Tory platform, which was released in the first week of the campaign to outcry from some parents.
"You can talk about all the tax credits you want, but if you can't get the daycare staff, it's meaningless," said Taft.
One parent who argued with Premier Ed Stelmach at that Tory announcement said she pays $875 a month for her two-year-old daughter's care.
"If I wanted to have two kids, I couldn't afford to put them in daycare and continue to work," Sharlene Dolan said at the time. "And there's no incentive to stay home."
Stelmach promised a modest tax credit for eligible parents. But Dolan and others have said the Tory plan provides them with little relief.
"It still doesn't put a cap on the daycares," she said. "It can sound really good right now on paper, but if the daycare costs go up, it doesn't help."
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"We can't get qualified people because they can go across the road to serve doughnuts and earn a lot more money," said Comer. "We have had an ad in the newspaper for the last 12 months and I've received only one phone call."
The NDP released their daycare platform Monday. It would cap child care fees for infants at $25 a day and limit fees for after-school care to $9 a day.
NDP Leader Brian Mason says his party would also increase grants to daycares, which would allow them to boost wages and help retain workers.
But Mason is also highly critical of the Tory plan. He says there's no excuse for Alberta to fund child care at the lowest level of any province in Canada.
"I think the premier's plan is ridiculous. I think it's a joke," said the NDP leader. "And I think it shows how out of touch the Conservative party are with the average families in this province."
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- reprinted from The Canadian Press