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Human Resources Minister Diane Finley takes issue with the notion that the rich will receive more than the poor under the federal government's new child-care program -- but she makes no apologies for the fact that they will get no less.
"It's a universal benefit. And, by definition, universal means available to all, wherever they are, whether they are in a rural area or an urban, which obviously have different cost structures and different availabilities -- different forms of child care," Ms. Finley said yesterday.
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But the Caledon Institute, a think-tank, released a report yesterday that says the rich stand to benefit far more from the proposed child-care allowance than lower- and middle-income families.
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When asked in the House of Commons to explain why rich families will get more than poor families from the plan, Ms. Finley replied: "The numbers released in the report regarding this situation were, in fact, inaccurate."
Later, in an interview, she said the Caledon Institute had jumped to conclusions that the budget will ultimately prove wrong.
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When pressed for details of what she considers inaccurate, Ms. Finley said it was wrong for the institute to assume, in one of its models, that Ontario would claw back the child-care allowance to leave a double-income family making a combined $30,000 annually with just $199 of the original $1,200.
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But Ken Battle, the president of the Caledon Institute, said that would not affect his group's figures because the study assumed that Ontario would not claw back the allowance.
- reprinted from the Globe and Mail