September 5, 2006
Kamloops Daily News


The Conservative's child care plan is a failure. It fails
to deliver child care and it fails to deliver maximum
benefits to families who need it most: the working poor.

Canadians reasonably expect that if program is called a
Universal Child Care Plan that it would be a plan to care
for children. But the federal Conservative's plan isn't.

Here's their plan: give money to parents with kids under the
age of six.

Perhaps Conservatives don't understand the concept. A child
care plan would nurture children and develop their
intellectual growth and social skills. Their plan does none
of that.

It's more of a child rebate program than a child care plan.
A rebate plan works by mailing in a coupon that you received
with the purchase of an article and receiving a cheque in
the mail.

Under the Conservative child rebate plan, you notify the
government that you have children under the age of six years
and you receive a $100 cheque in the mail every month.

The Conservatives have spent hundreds of thousands of
government money on newspaper ads that try to convince us
otherwise. The ads say that "Canada's Universal Child Care
Plan," creates "Choice, support, spaces." Pictures of cute
kids suggest that it's a child care plan.

The plan has nothing to do with child care and everything to
do with giving more money to families, something most
Canadians support. With Canada's birth rate below the level
required to sustain economic growth and meet industry's need
for workers, families need all the help that they can get in
raising children.

The child rebate plan would be a good idea if it didn't
already exist but we already have one. It's called the
Canada Child Tax Benefit. I'll call it the baby bonus for
simplicity. In fact, if you are eligible for the baby
bonus you are eligible for the child rebate.

Low income working families need help the most but under the
Conservative plan, they receive the least. First, they no
longer get $249 annually that they received under the former
plan. Then, they have to pay taxes on the child rebate.

For example, a working poor family in Ontario ends up with a
net $64 per month. On the other hand, a rich family will
get $81 according to the Caledon Institute.

So why not simply increase the baby bonus by $100 a month?
The baby bonus is untaxed and therefore more money stays in
the pockets of families. What's more, low income families
would receive the former amount of $249 annually.

The simple reason is politics. In the last election, the
Liberal's Day Care Plan was very popular with urban
Canadians. In an attempt to win city votes, the
Conservatives cooked up this child rebate plan.

Their plan was also a political failure. Not one
Conservative member was elected from Canada's largest three
metropolitan areas.

There is some hope that the child rebate plan will become a
real child care plan through the creation of child care
spaces starting in 2007. The government has set aside $250
million for that. I suspect that new plan will be released
in time for the next election when this minority government
falls and they try again to win over urban voters.

The Conservative plan did appeal to constituents who are
suspicious of government-operated day care centres and would
probably not use them if they did exist because of what they
would likely teach; that gays and lesbians are born that
way; that being religious is not required to be good; that
science and faith are separate fields of study.

If the Conservatives were really interested in providing the
opportunity for parents to stay home and care for their
kids, they would increase worker's wages.

The greatest barrier to home care is that both parents have
to work. Conservative policies of former Liberal and
Conservative governments have made stay-at-home parents
almost impossible. Stagnant wages relative to inflation
have made it necessary that both parents work.

It will take much more than $100 a month to reverse the
decline of family income. If the Conservatives are serious
about one parent staying home they would increase wages of
the working parent by strengthening unions and increasing
the minimum wage.

But I have as much hope that will happen as I have in
promises of a Conservative child care program.

David Charbonneau is the owner of Trio Technical.
He can be reached at dcharbonneau13@shaw.ca

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