Social Conservatives to sell Tory Child Care Plan

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Social conservatives to sell Tory daycare plan
Federal officials seek lobbyists' help to put a positive face on key agenda item
BRIAN LAGHI

From Wednesday's Globe and Mail

Conservative government officials have reached out to a coalition of social conservative lobby groups in an effort to help sway public opinion in the coming battle over the Tory daycare deal.

Socially conservative Tories, including Senator Anne Cools, met early this month with a number of organizations that support replacing the former Liberal government's public daycare program with a Tory idea for a $1,200 annual allowance. MP Jason Kenney, parliamentary secretary to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, also briefly attended the meeting.

Group spokespersons said yesterday that they will publicize the Conservative plan in part out of concern that organizations opposing the idea are well-organized and increasingly vocal.

"When the thing arises on the drawing board, we'll be there," said Gwen Landolt, vice-president of REAL Women, one of the groups in attendance.

"And in the meantime, we're doing what we can to educate the public and to lay the groundwork for controversy to come when the bill is brought forward."

Daycare promises to be the most controversial of Mr. Harper's five priorities, which include cutting the goods and services tax, providing a waiting-times guarantee for health care, the new accountability act and getting tough on crime. Provincial governments have already expressed deep concern about the changes.

Yesterday, the Prime Minister said he is willing to see his government defeated rather than give up the plan to pay parents $1,200 a year for every preschool child.

"As part of our upcoming budget, we will ask Parliament to approve a universal child-care allowance," he said in Vancouver.

"The previous government spent a lot of time talking about child care and, since the election, they [Liberals] have been beating their chests on the issue, but for all of their talk, they have precious little to show for it."

Ms. Landolt said the meeting took place on April 3, the day Parliament reopened.

Sources said others at the meeting included Charles McVety, president of the Canada Family Action Coalition, and Joseph Ben-Ami, executive director of the Institute for Canadian Values, a faith-based public policy think-tank, among others.

Sources also said that one of the officials in the Prime Minister's Office made phone calls to organize the meeting. Ms. Cools spearheaded the effort, in part to deflect any negative publicity toward Mr. Harper's office, a source said.

Sandra Buckler, a spokeswoman for the Prime Minister, said the PMO official did not make any telephone calls to organize the meeting.

She said the meeting did not include only social conservatives.

"The only thing I can possibly say is that we're reaching out to all interested groups who agree with our child-care plan," Ms. Buckler said.

Ms. Landolt, whose organization describes itself as upholding social policies that make homemaking possible for women, said many parents want help to care for their children at home.

Mr. Ben-Ami said he supports the Tory program because it is focused on giving parents a choice.

"The tax system is hard on families," he said. "It doesn't really recognize the contribution of the stay-at-home parent very well."

Mr. Ben-Ami added that his group is not a "salesperson" for the Tory government, but that parents across the country who support the idea may want to get involved.

Mr. Ben-Ami said the meeting was facilitated by Ms. Cools and that Mr. Kenney dropped in. Ms. Buckler said that Mr. Kenney stayed for only about five minutes.

Neither Mr. McVety, Mr. Kenney nor Ms. Cools could be reached for comment yesterday.

Carolyn Bennett, the Liberal Party's social-development critic, said the importance of her party's program must be better explained to young people, seniors and other individuals who don't have children.

 

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Oh oh, here come the Christian soldiers, marching as to war.

 

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Call it many things, but not a 'child-care' policy

JEFFREY SIMPSON

E-mail Jeffrey Simpson | Read Bio | Latest Columns
Like the other famous five promises of the Conservative government, the wrongly called "child-care" policy is good politics but lousy policy.

The Conservatives, you might recall, pledged to give all families $1,200 per child under 6. They called it the Choice in Child Care Allowance. The money, according to their campaign platform, "will let parents choose the child-care option that best suits their family's needs."

It will do nothing of the kind. Simple math shows why. The $1,200 is supposed to go to the lowest-income earner. Say that person earns $40,000. For simplicity's sake, suppose he or she pays tax such that of the $1,200, a $1,000 per child is left.

That would mean about $4 per day, per child. Now, you tell me: Where can anybody get child care for $4 per day? Statistics Canada recently reported that 54 per cent of children aged six months to five years were in some form of care in 2002-03. Government help of $4 a day won't do much for the majority.

How about people who care for children at home -- the ones the Conservatives are counting on the family- and faith-based social conservative groups to mobilize behind their plan? Even if the child is cared for at home, $4 a day is enough for milk, fruit and a sandwich for lunch. That's not child care by any commonly understood definition of the phrase.

Try another example. Suppose the income-earner is better-off and so pays at a higher marginal tax rate that drops the $1,200 per child to, say, $700 per child. Now you're talking about $2.80 a day.

It could be worse, too. The Conservatives' platform says the $1,200 will be "in addition to" existing child-care tax benefits. If the $1,200 is added to existing benefits, and then all are taxed, some people could really get hammered.

The excellent Caledon Institute reckons that a two-earner couple earning $36,000 -- just above the poverty line -- would see only $420 of the $1,200 because the couple would lose other social benefits.

That would work out to about $1.60 a day.

The mathematical details don't matter. They'll vary from family to family. The bottom line is that whatever the family size or income, this Conservative policy isn't a child-care policy -- either for those who care for children at home, or send them outside the home. The money is a joke either way.

Even worse, the money goes to upper-income people who don't need it. Yes, they'll pay tax at the marginal rate, but they'll be getting a cheque. So will the cleaning lady.

What we have in this Choice in Child Care Allowance is a modern equivalent in concept to the old, long-abandoned family allowan-

ces. These monthly cheques were sent by Ottawa to mothers -- the money went to the woman in the family -- and they proved politically very popular.

Who doesn't like to receive a cheque from government? Ralph Klein figured that out with his $400 "prosperity cheques" to Albertans.

The cheques were great politics, but lousy policy.

The Conservatives have figured out that jigging around with tax policy doesn't win votes, unless people can finger the money. Change tax brackets. Who understands that? Alter corporate tax rates. Who likes corporations anyway?

But give people a cheque. Now there's something they can put in their hands and spend. Cut the GST. That's something people will notice when they make purchases.

So this ballyhooed Choice in Child Care Allowance is part of a wider plan to produce tax changes that people will recognize, and for which they will subsequently be politically grateful.

You can argue either way what a child-care policy should be.

You can put extra money into constructing and providing state-subsidized places, as the Liberals had proposed and as the child-care lobby wants.

Or you can give individuals money and offer incentives for the construction of new spaces, trying to deal with both the supply and demand challenges, as the Conservatives propose.

But you cannot claim that $1.50-to-$4-a-day per child is a plan, or even part of a plan for something called child care. You can call it a smokescreen. You can dress it up, as Republicans would in the United States, as a gesture toward "family values." You can make the ideological case that it at least avoids state control.

You just can't call it serious child-care policy.

jsimpson@globeandmail.com