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Prime Minister Paul Martin outlines the Liberal child-care plan in Saint John, New Brunswick on Tuesday.
Liberals offer an extra $6 billion for day careUpdated Tue. Dec. 6 2005 11:32 PM ET CTV.ca News Liberal Leader Paul Martin is promising to more than double his child-care deal with the provinces, upping the ante in a duel over day-care strategies with the Conservatives. The Liberals pledged $5 billion for child care over five years during the 2004 election campaign. Today, Martin said a Liberal-led government would make child care a permanent part of Canada's social benefits system. To that end, Martin said the Liberals would commit an additional $6 billion to child care when the first allotment runs out in 2009 -- increasing the Liberals' commitment to $11 billion through 2015. Broken down, this means provinces and territories would receive ongoing funding of $1.2 billion per year. Further, under the plan by the Martin Liberals, federal funds earmarked for municipal infrastructure funds could be used to build day-care spaces. "This is an initiative that we believe without any shadow of a doubt will stand the test of time," said Martin in his first policy announcement since he called the election one week ago. "It will make a real and lasting difference in the lives of our children and our communities. We're investing in the Canadians of tomorrow, in the Canada of tomorrow." Martin's proposal comes just one day after Conservative Leader Stephen Harper unveiled his pledge to give parents an annual allowance of $1,200 for each of their children under the age of six. Contrasting choice The back-to-back promises by the Liberals and Conservatives give Canadians a highly contrasting choice in child care proposals to ponder: giving provinces more money to provide subsidized day care, or giving parents money to make their own child-care choices, respectively. Harper said his allowance plan would give families the freedom to spend the money as they see fit. He also expects the $250 million in annual tax credits he's promising to fund a community child-care investment program will create 125,000 new child-care spaces over the next five years. But, according to Martin, Harper's plan would ultimately provide families with only about $25 a week per child. "That, in many cases, barely pays for one day," Martin told reporters Tuesday at a YWCA child care facility in St. John, N.B. Social Development Minister Ken Dryden criticized what he called the insufficient amount proposed under the Tory plan, saying that after taxes, the allowance per child would dwindle to about $1,000. "That's $1,000 in the context of child care across the country that costs, on average, $8,000," the Liberal MP said Tuesday on Canada AM. "What it does is it makes things a little bit easier for parents to do exactly what they're already doing. But it doesn't make the system any better." Liberals also claim the Tory plan to create child-care spaces falls about 450,000 spaces short of what the Liberal party proposes, and that it also fails to address the costs of maintaining the centres. "What (Harper) is saying is, 'I'll put up a certain amount of money for child care-spaces'," said Martin. "But what he's (really) saying is: I'll put up an empty box. There will be no operating costs going along with that ... no early learning, no regulation, no insistence on high quality. "It's simply an empty box. That's not a child-care plan." Liberal plan fails to offer choices: Tories Defending of his child-care policy, Harper attacked a remark made by Martin in which he declared the Liberal child-care deal was supported by a "vast majority of those who are knowledgeable." "I don't know about the Liberals," Harper told reporters in Newfoundland on Tuesday, "but when it comes to choices in child care, I can't think of anyone more knowledgeable than parents. Mr. Martin may not support giving child care support directly to parents, but I do." Critics of the Liberal proposal also say that it discriminates against stay-at-home parents, or parents who choose options other than an institutional day-care program for their children. Tory social development critic Rona Ambrose said only 23 per cent of parents in Canada choose to place their children into the "institutional" daycare supported under the Liberal plan. In the Liberal estimation, Ambrose told Canada AM, "regulated, public daycare is better care than what a parent could provide at home or a neighbour or a grandmother. But the Liberal plan will not give money to parents. It doesn't give money to whether or not you'd like to use a trusted neighbour or friend down the street, or whether you'd like to stay at home part-time." But Monica Lysack, executive director of the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada, echoed the Liberal critique of the Tory approach. "A small cash payment -- well, large when you look at the billions of dollars that it will take to pay for this -- is not a very cost-effective approach," Lysack said Monday in an interview on CTV Newsnet. "And is not child care." While she agreed with the Tory platform in terms of parents needing choices when it comes to child care, she said: "I think that simply giving them money to solve their own problem doesn't do it. "I think we need to continue to invest in child care as a public system."
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