Thanks for childcare cash, but where do parents spend it?
Cariboo Press -- Kelowna Capital News
May 3, 2006
EXCERPT:

I don't know if Prime Minister Stephen Harper's wife works outside the home. But if she does, I bet childcare is not the issue for the Harpers that it is for rest of us.

The Conservative government's decision to give parents of children aged up to six years of age an extra $1,200 a year for childcare only helps some of the people who need assistance looking after their kids.

The conundrum of holding down a full-time job and having your children properly cared for while you're at work does not stop once a child starts school. If it did, my work day and that of millions of working parents across this country would end at 2:30 p.m.

What about kids aged six to 12 whose parents work outside the home? Are they supposed to fend for themselves after school?

The last time I checked, it was illegal to leave young children on their own.

But the government's budget, introduced yesterday by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, does little to help the parents of the Central Okanagan's estimated 13,000 kids aged six to 12.

Instead of using the $3.7 billion that the Tories plan to spend on their new childcare supplement program to create more child care spaces for all children, a fraction of that--$250 million--is being set aside to create more spaces.

So, unless parents can find babysitters to look after their young children, where will the parents who get the $1,200 a year spend their new found childcare subsidy?

I have a 10-year-old daughter who, until recently, went to the Boys and Girl's Club after school. It already has a waiting list for next year and that is not unique amongst childcare facilities.

According to B.C. Stats, the provincial agency that keeps numerical tabs us, there were an estimated 10,548 children aged one to six years of age in the Central Okanagan last year. The local school district has about 20,000 kids in kindergarten to Grade 12. It doesn't take a math whiz to figure that there are an awful lot of local parents who are being ignored by Ottawa's new-found concern about childcare.

The economic reality now is that many two-parent families have both parents working. The struggle facing single-parent families is even harder...

The universal child-care benefit, as the Tories are calling it, won't support more choice, because the required spaces Canadians needs are not there to be chosen.