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Last year, the federal Tories came up with the hare-brained idea of offering tax credits to employers willing to create child-care spaces.
This was the Harper government's solution to helping working Canadians scrambling to find appropriate care for their kids.
Well, don't expect employers to fall over themselves getting into the kiddy business once the child-care agreements the Liberals arranged with the provinces end in April.
For the most part, businesses don't see it as their concern or responsibility to set up day-care centres. Heck, it's hard enough to get employers to embrace job-sharing and flexible hours.
And even in the unlikely event that an employer steps up to the plate and creates day-care spaces, where's the operation funding going to come from?
Questions, questions. But not a lot of answers from the Tories.
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A government-appointed committee was supposed to make recommendations on the child-care spaces initiative last fall. That advice has yet to be made public.
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In essence, we've taken a huge step backwards on the day-care front, according to a report on the issue released last week by a coalition pushing for a pan-Canadian child-care program.
"In Canada today, the very idea of a publicly funded, comprehensive and integrated system of early learning and child care has been attacked," says the report by the Code Blue coalition.
"We know that a piecemeal approach to (child care) does not work," it adds.
Yet, that's exactly what we've got. We're one of the richest countries in the world, yet we spend pitifully little public money on benefits and services for families.
In a poll last year for Lysack's group, most of those surveyed supported a universal child-care program. More than 75% considered the lack of affordable child care to be a serious problem.
Ordinary Albertans bluntly described their experiences in focus groups and surveys done for an Alberta government consultation paper on the issue last year.
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"If Canadians are to continue having children, the issues surrounding appropriate child care must be addressed," said one woman.
It won't happen on Stephen Harper's watch.
- reprinted from the Edmonton Sun