Liberal-NDP Child Care Is a One-Dimensional Boondoggle in the Making

March 15, 2006

When the 39th Parliament opens in April, one of the biggest legislative ‘battles’ to take place across the House of Commons chamber floor will be the debate over child care.

The Conservative government believes parents are the ‘experts’ on how to best care for their children. We also know child care needs vary with family situation, working hours and each individual child.

Federal Liberals and New Democrats operate under the misguided belief that all parents would choose to send their children to daycare facilities while they work 9-to-5, and that parents who don’t want to send their children to daycare centres should be “encouraged” to do so by government because regulated daycare is the only high-quality child care option.

The Conservative government’s child care plan will fund 125,000 child care spaces in daycare facilities operated by the provinces, non-profit organizations, private operators and employers. Yet it will also offer assistance to ALL parents of children under six through a $1,200 annual child care allowance.

The Liberal-NDP daycare scheme involves spending $5-Billion on regulated daycare facilities ONLY. That’s a lot of money for a plan that will serve only those parents who choose or need institutionalized daycare. What about those families that don’t fit into the Liberal child care vision?

I realize that $1,200 per year doesn’t come close to covering child care costs. Yet, it adheres to the credo “every little bit helps”, and it helps ALL families with young children. It’s a matter of fairness and that’s what a responsible government must seek to achieve when spending billions of your tax dollars.

So besides the input from his constituents, what does a middle-aged man with grown children know about child care? I have been privy to the struggles of my two assistants in Ottawa as they’ve made difficult child care choices. These ladies have three young children each. Though both are full-time employees now, as their child-rearing needs have evolved through the years, we’ve exercised many working scenarios: full-time, part-time, working from home (telecommuting) and job-sharing.

One assistant pulled her youngest child from an otherwise great provincial daycare facility because she found her young daughter thrives better under the loving care of her grandmother. The three school-age children of my other assistant, a rural resident, are cared for before and after school in the home of a qualified early childhood educator who operates a local cooperative nursery school during the school day.

The Liberal-NDP child care scheme, by financing only regulated daycare, suggests that my assistants’ choices and the choice of millions of other Canadian parents whose children are cared for at home or in someone else’s, are somehow second-rate.

After 12 years of promises, the former Liberal government in its dying days, cobbled together a grandiose, unrealistic daycare scheme comprised of a patchwork of “no-strings attached” agreements with the provinces.

In this upcoming session of Parliament, the Conservative government will fight this one-dimensional ‘boondoggle in the making’ and establish a child care program driven by parents’ needs, not bureaucrats.

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