Harper vows to go his own way on child care despite critics

Prime Minister dares opposition parties to defeat Conservative minority in Parliament

Ottawa (20 April 2006) - Prime Minister Stephen Harper remains determined to scrap the $5-billion national child care plan Canadians want and need, apparently confident that opposition parties will be too timid to defeat his minority government and risk another federal election.

Harper announced this week that he will make his child care alternative - up to $100 a month payments to parents with children under age six - part of the first Conservative budget and thus subject to a confidence vote in the House of Commons.

Speaking in British Columbia yesterday, Harper characterized his child care allowance scheme as a way to "cut out the bureaucratic middleman" and put money directly into the hands of parents.

The problem is that the "middlemen" Harper has cut out of the program are child care providers who provide child care spaces. His allowance will create no new spaces. And parents can't buy services that don't exist.

The National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE) welcomes income support for families but opposes Harper's plan to scrap the child care framework agreements negotiated by the former government with all 10 provinces.

The Harper plan will do nothing to create new child care spaces for working families in Canada. As structured, it will also provide the least benefit to families where both parents work - families who often need child care the most.

In Ontario for example, a two-earner family earning just $36,000 a year could see as little as $32 a month, after taxes and clawbacks. Stay at home parents with no income will not have any of the benefit taxed, meaning some of this country's wealthiest families will benefit most.

Because of this, it has been criticized as the 'Celine Dion child care plan', since the wealthy Canadian singer would be among those to receive the allowance.

The national child care program plan negotiated between the provinces and the former government, in collaboration with child care advocates across the country, would have created up to 250,000 child care spaces by 2009.

Despite Harper's claim that Canadians support the Tory scheme, 64% of all votes cast in the last election were for candidates representing parties who support an affordable, accessible, national child care program. NUPGE