EXCERPTS

Women's groups, unions and other activists are sending a Mothers Day message to the federal government, urging expansion of day care and an extra tax credit for moms.

The National Association of Women and the Law, in a message endorsed by 116 other groups, asks Prime Minister Stephen Harper to finance universally accessible daycare of the kind he has long rejected. The association says the taxable $1,200 annual child-care payment promised in the Tory budget should be transformed into a tax credit for mothers on top of a national child-care program.

The message urges the government to institute more generous maternity and parental benefits modelled on the Quebec pattern.

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- Reprinted from the Calgary Sun.