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With Canada's shortage of day-care spaces, you'd think our politicians would look enthusiastically at other countries or jurisdictions where there's a day-care system that's working.
They might, for instance, look at Australia, where an enterprise called ABC Learning Centres has boasted of opening four new day-care centres a week in that country, caring for 70,000 children and counting. The company has expanded into the United States and is reportedly scouting out Canada.
ABC Learning Centres makes money. What's more, some of the profit comes from subsidies the Australian government gives lower-income parents to pay for child care. So, the Australian program is working exactly as it's supposed to: parents get child care in a centre they choose at a price the government is willing to pay.
Naturally, a great many Canadian politicians want to be sure the Australian model doesn't come here.
Specifically, the NDP is pushing Bill C-303, which aims to forbid private daycare enterprises and to do so by replicating the worst parts of the Canada Health Act. Under the bill, the federal government could give money to the provinces for daycare only if the provinces made certain none of it ended up with private companies -- only government-run centres and non-profits could end up with any government money.
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Supporters of this self-defeating bill can trot out a cast of bogeymen. The unlicensed private daycare in Ottawa whose operator was recently charged with mistreating children apparently indicates something about the private sector. And opponents of anything private call the Australian system the "Wal-Martization" of daycare. Because, well, Wal-Mart is a corporation ... and that's enough said.
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The NDP, in true statist fashion, evidently believe that it's better to have no child care at all than to have it provided by somebody who's making money doing it, even if parents trust the provider and even if the facilities meet all provincial standards and all the staff have the best qualifications. Public and non-profit daycares might very well provide the best services, but it's absurd to say that children are better off on waiting lists, and or in under-the-table operations, than they would be in licensed for-profit facilities.
If this brand of socialism worked, we'd be enjoying an efficient, inexpensive, well-staffed hospital system and a surplus of family doctors all fighting to take care of us. But we don't. Canada's day-cares don't need any more of this kind of help.
- reprinted from the Ottawa Citizen