The GREEN PARTY PLATFORM
The Green Party of Canada is committed to nurturing families and communities through integrated policies that focus on the welfare of the child, starting with prenatal nutrition all the way to affordable housing and accessible post secondary education.
We believe we must stop designing our communities around the car and start designing them around families and children. There are no easy solutions. We have to address the multi-layered problems facing families through new, innovative fiscal, labour and social policies.
We support:
- a real national childcare plan
- income-splitting for families
- a Charter right to clean air and water
- support for family farms
- flex hours for working parents
Strong communities start with
- Help for married couples and families.
- Fix the tax system. Lower income taxes and introduce full income splitting to reduce the tax burden on married couples and families.
- Share the load. More people working fewer hours. For those who want to, make it easier to telecommute or work from home. Share jobs. Flex hours. Flexible child care with access for all. Early childhood education. More workplace child care spaces. Support for those who stay home to raise their children and support for those who need to get back to work while their kids are still young.
http://greenparty.ca/platform2011/community
—–
The LIBERAL PLATFORM – “Your Family. Your Future. Your Canada.”
Page 25 and 26
“Early Childhood Learning and Care
Every child in Canada deserves the best possible start in life and a comprehensive approach to learning in Canada must begin with Early Childhood Learning.
We’ve already seen leadership from some provinces, particularly Quebec. But due to the lack of federal leadership, Canada receives failing grades from international bodies, including the OECD and UNICEF, for having no coordinated, national early childhood learning and care policy.
Working parents, amid all their other pressures, often struggle with waiting lists for the limited number of existing spaces. That wait can often last years.
A Liberal government will establish a new Early Childhood Learning and Care Fund that will begin with $500 million in the first year, rising to an annual commitment of $1 billion by the fourth year.
Administered as a new social infrastructure fund, provinces and territories will be able to apply to the Fund for cost-sharing of early childhood learning and care plans that create and operate new, affordable, high-quality early childhood learning and care spaces across Canada, with well-trained professional staff.
The long-term goal is a high-quality, affordable early childhood learning and care space for every Canadian family that wants one. But the federal government cannot do this on its own. It will require sustained collaboration among all governments. As implementation of the Fund ramps up joint investment, a Liberal government will also work with other governments on the research, policy development, and sharing of best practices for the system necessary to meet this long-term goal. This plan will support innovation and different approaches at the provincial and community level.
A Liberal government will place Canada on a path of step-by-step, year-by-year progress in improving access to inclusive early childhood learning and care. The result will be higher quality care for Canadian families, less waiting for spaces, and a country with a renewed commitment to the learning and development of our youngest citizens.”
CODE BLUE response to the Liberal election plan for early childhood learning and care
—–
The NDP Platform – Giving Your Family a Break: Practical First Steps.
1.3 Improving Access to Child Care and Post-Secondary Education
We will work with the provinces and territories to establish and fund a Canada-wide child care and early learning program, enshrined in law, with the following goals:
- The creation of 25,000 new child care spaces per year for the next four years;
- Improvements to community infrastructure to support the growth of child care spaces;
- The creation of integrated, community-based, child-centred early learning and education centres that provide parents with a “one-stop shop” for family services.
We will make post-secondary education more affordable by directly attacking skyrocketing tuition costs with a designated $800 million transfer to the provinces and territories to lower tuition fees, as per the NDP’s Post Secondary Education Act;
We will increase the funding in the Canada Student Grants Program by $200 million a year, targeting accessibility for Aboriginal, disabled and low-income students, in particular;
We will raise the education tax credit from $4,800 per year to $5,760 per year to help with increasing education costs.
1.8 Helping Lift Children and Families out of Poverty
As a practical first step to eliminate child poverty, we will combine existing supports like the Child Tax Benefit to create a non-taxable Child Benefit and increase the support steadily by up to $700 per child over the next four years. This will be in addition to the current Universal Child Care Benefit;
We will table legislation that will set goals and targets for poverty reduction in consultation with the provincial, territorial, municipal and Aboriginal governments and with non-governmental organizations.