Government leery of providing cost details on [federal] child-care plan
Globe and Mail
7 Sep 06
By: Gloria Galloway

EXCERPT

The federal government is reluctant to divulge the cost of running its new Universal Child Care Benefit.

The Globe and Mail asked for the breakdown of those costs earlier this summer and was provided through access-to-information laws with 135 pages of material, most of it internal e-mails between employees of Human Resources and Social Development Canada.

One page suggests the annual costs of administering the $1.6-billion benefits program were at one time estimated to be $41-million this year, $21.5-million next year and $17.3-million in subsequent years. But the e-mails, generated after The Globe quizzed Prime Minister Stephen Harper about the costs during a press conference in April, state clearly that "the parameters have changed" and so have the figures.

Any new estimates were blacked out on all documents.

When pressed by The Globe for the revised numbers, the department promised a month ago to release them verbally. As of yesterday, they had not been provided.

The blacked-out documents suggest the costs have increased because of a decision by Human Resources Minister Diane Finley to send the first payments of $100 monthly per preschool child by cheque to every recipient.

In addition, the government has launched an extensive advertising program to alert parents to the benefit and it may be that the costs of those ads have exceeded the original estimates of $4-million.

In a second phase of the program, Ms. Finley announced earlier this week the creation of a ministerial committee to provide advice on the expansion of child-care spaces.

The Conservatives hope to create 125,000 spaces over the next five years by providing tax credits to employers and some form of assistance to non-profit organizations. This initiative, combined with the Universal Child Care Benefit, replaces the previous Liberal government's plan to create spaces by giving money directly to the provinces and territories...

Morna Ballantyne, the co-ordinator of a group calling itself the Code Blue for Childcare campaign, said, "Currently about 70 per cent of child-care spaces have been created and are operated by community organizations, municipal governments, none of whom are represented on the advisory committee."

But Dr. Chong dismissed the complaint. "I have a very broad perspective on child care and dislike either extreme in the perspective," he said.

The committee will report to the minister this fall but is under strict orders not to make its report public.

The conflict is another twist in a long saga of philosophical differences between those who support the Conservative plan to put most federal dollars into the hands of parents and those who argue that the money is better spent on the direct creation of quality spaces.

A report, compiled by HRSDC staff shortly after the Conservatives took office in January, talks about the need for consultations with employers and community child-care organizations "to help ensure that the initiative is designed to best meet their needs."

The Globe asked -- again through the federal access-to-information laws -- for any documents, correspondence or reports related to those consultations and was told that: "a nil response is being provided as there are no records available at this time."

That would suggest that there have, to this point, been very limited consultations with employers regarding child-care spaces....