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EXCERPTS
Stephen Harper has long opposed national social programs that benefit women and poorer Canadians. In a 1994 speech to the National Citizens Coalition, Harper said the Reform Party's great achievement was killing universality in programs such as family allowance and unemployment insurance. Universal social programs were "virtually dead as a concept" he crowed.
Now Stephen Harper is poised to kill the national day care plan recently negotiated between the federal government and the provinces. He would cancel the $4.8 billion earmarked for desperately needed child care spaces in exchange for giving families with small children a paltry $1,200 a year. This money is nowhere near enough to pay for decent child care anywhere in the country.
This may not sound important to Mr. Harper and his gang. An MP's salary will pay for private care. But the situation is desperate for many families, especially female-headed households. Campaign 2000, the national coalition working to eradicate child poverty, reports that, in the last decade, one third of Canadian children have lived in poverty for a year. Lack of child care sets up a vicious cycle for parents who cannot go out to work and leave a child unattended at home.
Canada is one of the last modern, developed democracies not to have national child care plan. If Stephen Harper becomes Prime Minister, the dream will be put off for a decade.
- reprinted from Maclean's