OTTAWA — There's no federal help in sight for frazzled parents facing years on waiting lists for child care.

One year after the Conservatives won power on a platform touting 125,000 new spaces over five years, there isn't even a clear plan on how to create them. And there's uncertainty mixed with alarm across Canada over looming fee increases and program cuts since the Tories dropped the $5-billion Liberal plan to build a national early learning system. "They're really over a barrel," said Monica Lysack, executive director of the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada.

"They don't have a plan. They haven't created a space. Parents are being caught in the middle of this cut-and-run approach."

Conservatives are handing out cheques worth $1,200 a year (minus taxes) for each child under six. But they're running from the fact that there are registered spaces for fewer than 20 per cent of kids under 12, Lysack said.

Parents - regardless of income - have received $1.2 billion since the first payments were mailed in July, according to the government.

"Great," said Lysack. "But it's not child care. Even they acknowledge that."

In British Columbia and Ontario, it's not unusual for waiting lists to stretch to more than two years for a pre-school spot.

The Conservatives committed $250 million in last year's budget to create new spaces in 2007-08. But their tax-incentive plan to lure employers and non-profit groups into the costly and bureaucratic child-care business has been widely panned. Similar efforts in Ontario under the former Mike Harris Tories failed badly when corporations didn't bite.

Former social development minister Diane Finley held talks with child-care groups last summer and was to draft space-creation recommendations by the fall. The report has still not been released.

Monte Solberg, who replaced Finley after a cabinet shuffle this month, was not available for comment Monday.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has conceded that his government's approach may need tweaking. Still, one of his first acts in power was to cancel $5 billion in promised Liberal child-care funding as of March 31, 2007.

Provinces had banked on having that cash for another three years.

The Ontario government lost $1.4 billion and has been left hanging, said Mary Anne Chambers, the province's minister for child and family services.

"By September of last year we created 15,000 new spaces - a clear indication of the demand," she said.

The province had hoped to add 25,000 spots, but even that would have filled just one-quarter of pent-up needs, Chambers said.

"Not all parents want this, obviously, but the majority say they need it."

Sara Landriault, mother of three young daughters in Kemptville, Ont., represents Fund the Child. The group wants Ottawa to offer more tax credits and income-geared help that will give parents more child-care choice.

Kathy Graham, head of the Association of Day Care Operators of Ontario, agrees that fiscal policies geared to helping families afford quality care are key to easing what she calls a growing "crisis."

Provincial and federal funds should be used to stabilize and expand already existing centres, and to increase "pitifully low" staff salaries that still hover below $10 an hour on average, she said.

"We've got caught up somehow in thinking that governments should create day care. And that's wrong."

Graham said new centres wind up poaching from the 600 private and non-profit members that her group represents.

"We can't even retain the staff we've got because we're in direct competition with the government-created day cares. We're constantly losing."

Provinces that blame the federal Conservatives for child-care cuts, as the B.C. government recently did, should be held to account, Graham added.

"Too many provinces are not putting any of their own additional money into stabilizing child care. It's children who are becoming the pawns in this political game."