Daycare not child's play
The Daily News (Kamloops)
September 23, 2008
Opinion

Stephane Dion and Jack Layton vied with each other recently in tossing around a lot of rhetoric about what they plan to spend creating day-care spaces. Voters, however, need to understand that much of what they're saying is razzle-dazzle, for they have no unilateral power to create spaces at the wave of a hand or the writing of a cheque.

The NDP is promising to spend $1.45 billion in its first program year to create 150,000 day-care spaces. The Liberals pledge $1.25 billion a year to create 165,000 spaces. They also vow they'll double the Harper government's payments of $100 a month to parents of kids under six.

In reality, child care is a provincial jurisdiction and each province delivers it differently, says Jenny Robinson, a spokeswoman for the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada. If legislation approving the setting aside of such funds is passed, under a Dion or Layton government, then according to bilateral agreements already in place, the federal government must sit down at the negotiating table with each province and talk about how that money is to be spent.

Some of it may be spent subsidizing new spaces -- the average split nationwide is parents pay 80 per cent and the government pays 20 per cent -- but the money may also go to day-care operators to hire staff, improve services or raise wages. All of that would be hammered out at the bargaining table, when the details and plans for accountability are drawn up province by province.

It's a lengthy process and Canadian parents should not be fooled into thinking new spaces will spring up overnight like mushrooms….