Excerpts
...
Relying on misrepresentation of research literature, misinterpretation of public opinion polls and Statistics Canada surveys, the common agenda is to paint the $10 a day plan as a “failure” and “disaster” rather than the first largely successful phase of a Canada-wide project to build a workable child care system for all families and children over time.
...
The demand for licensed child care is strongly related to the child’s age. Parents with children less than two years are less likely to use licensed child care, so satisfying the demand for licensed care does not mean having spaces for 100% of children.
...
Cardus has identified the wrong culprit for the important inequities that remain. It is market-driven child care that disadvantages low-income families. It is universal child care that does a better job of welcoming the participation of low-income children to licensed child care.
...
Eliminating funding support for child care services and instead paying money to families to stay at home is the opposite of a solution to this problem.
...
Cardus does not really want financial support for licensed child care at all. Instead, Cardus wants us to return to some version of Stephen Harper’s Universal Child Care Benefit. They estimate that if the federal spending on the $10 a day child care program was divided equally amongst families instead of going directly to day care centres to lower fees, each family would receive $3,869 per child, per year. But, right now, families using low fee child care are receiving $5,000 – $15,000 in child care fee reductions. With the end of direct funding of child care, child care fees would soar and nearly a million families would be much worse off than they are currently. Child care would be unaffordable once again, and mothers would be squeezed out of employment by high fees. How is that a sensible and affordable child care policy? No wonder 75% of Canadians think that a Conservative government, if elected, shouldn’t end the $10 a day child care program.
...