National Daycare = Financial Sinkhole
February 2, 2010 · By Sean
So evidently Michael Ignatieff has jumped onto the tired old Liberal horse called Nationalized Daycare. He’s riding it for all it’s worth, and all we are worth too. They continuously cry out about how the Conservatives have “left the cupboard bare”, and in fact I just received an 10%er from Rodger Cuzner claiming exactly that.
Now, I live in a rural riding, and I’ve seen the challenges people have in finding day care for their children. Now I’m sure it’s ridings exactly like mine that Mr. Ignatieff et al have their eyes on when they talk about this glorious idea of a Nationalized Daycare program. Here’s the problem though, as seen through the eyes of someone in a rural riding.
We are not Toronto. Not a big surprise and certainly no stretch of the imagination. We have a population of approximately 109,000 people according to Elections Canada. If you’ve followed that link and looked into this riding, the map shows that we’re a fairly long strip of rural land. About half the population lives in Chatham itself and the remainder is spread out into smaller communities.
Now where the population is widely spaced, it’s likely that the only National Daycare Centres that would be put in place here are in the communities of Chatham and Leamington, possibly Tilbury and possibly Ridgetown. That leaves everyone else within the riding having to drive their children 20-30 minutes away from home and then having to travel back in order to go to work. This will very likely cause a lot of grief on any parent who would have to drive an hour (round trip) to another city/town at the beginning and the end of their day just to put their child into this Nationalized Daycare program.
As I’m sure everyone knows, there will be an complaint about Undue Hardship. The typical Liberal response to that will be to offer a subsidy for local day care because of the “unreasonable” distance a parent needs to travel. Likely, the local day care will be charging more given the potential loss of children to the ND program and the fact that it’s government subsidized. This will of course drive up the costs of the program. And I think we also know that the bleeding heart Liberals will succumb to nearly every complaint and woe presented to them.
Then there’s the loss of jobs in the private sector. For a party screaming about the loss of jobs in Canada, to put in a program that will essential wipe out an entire private industry is appalling! The government will of course require certain specialized certification in order to justify the elimination of the private industry which will require current providers to either upgrade their knowledge, which means going back to school which means loss of income and an increase in student debt ($$$), which may further be subsidized by the government ($$$), or else the former daycare provider will just have to suck it up and find a new job (more likely) or go on Employment Insurance ($$$), provided they’re eligible…
All of these costs will end up spiraling out of control (see National Gun Registry) due to poor planning and unrealistic expectations in productivity. The usual answer of the Liberals is to simply throw money at it and hope that solves the problem while crowing about investing in childcare (see Health Care).
How will they pay for all of this? Easy. They’ll simply raise taxes, or pull a Dalton on us and create a Childcare Premium.
The Liberals have been talking about this for nearly 2 decades and still can’t provide anything close to some kind of detail as to how this program might function within budget. This tells me that they have no plan, and that they’re just going to ‘figure it out as we go’.
If this ever happens, I’ll weep for the nation.
National daycare would be a disaster akin to Dion’s carbon tax. It sounds like a great idea, but like all the Liberal ideas it is just another social program designed to create a massive bureaucracy and escalating costs. Regardless of the proposed costs (of which we have seen nothing so far) they would soon explode beyond control.
The first thing that would happen is that all the employees would automatically become members of CUPE and would therefore be entitled to receive the pay scale as set out as set out in the union agreement, plus the entitled days off, and all the other perks associated with the featherbedding agreement.
Secondly, since this is a federal program, it would require that the daycares provide an early childhood development instructor. This would be followed by the necessity of having a full time nutritional consultant to oversee the preparation of meals, as well as the staff required to prepare and serve these meals.
Like schools, it would probably fall on the municipalities to provide busing for the children
At this point we would have added a minimum of four additional staffers to every daycare; all members of CUPE and able to hold parents and taxpayers hostage to their frequent work stoppages and contract demands at the most convenient time for the union and the worst time for parents.
If the Liberals can sell this hare-brained scheme to the public then they deserve what they get.
Amazing how Quebec isn’t mentioned even once when they are the only region that actually has subsidized daycare.
-Subsidizing daycare would increase accessibility to daycare, resulting in more daycare workers, not less.
-Upgrading knowledge and training translates to better service
-Subsidized daycare facilitates dual income homes — more tax revenue
One question about the 20-30 minute commute:
-How is this different than what you need to face when you send your kids to school? If your local community has a school, why not a daycare.
The only reason why I’d be against a federal daycare system is because it could be managed fine by the provinces. Right leaning provinces can implement what they want, left leaning provinces can implement what they want.
RD’s right. Canada would be well served by some federalism here. Though transfer payments do make that a little more tricky.
RD, as far as Quebec is concerned, they would “opt out” and take the cash equivalent as they do with almost every other federal program. Each Province has the same option to opt out and accept the cash instead and do their own thing, it’s just that most provinces are happy to let the Federal Government administer it. And last I heard, the Quebec Daycare program was already a financial burden Quebec is struggling with.
And in response to the 20-30 minute commute, when the kids are in school and they’re that far away, there’s usually a school bus service. I have yet to hear of a daycare that offers that. And even if it did, would you expect your 1-3 year old child to take the bus?
The subsidizing of daycare may create more spots in the larger centres, but it would create less in the more rural ones. It just wouldn’t make sense for the Federal Government to put a National Daycare Centre in each and every single community across the country. That would be an absurd waste of money and I’d take issue with that too if they tried. The fact remains that not everyone will be eligible or even able to give up an income and go back to school to “retrain”. That’s what will kill the rural community daycares that currently exist. And upgraded skills do not automatically translate into better service.
And what if someone doesn’t want to put their child into daycare? They currently don’t have to pay for it, and it’s yet another cost that would be downloaded onto parents that they shouldn’t have to pay.
The main reason why I’m against any kind of government provided daycare is because the private sector is fully capable of meeting this need.
Early childhood education is an advantage, but it’s not a requirement. And frankly, I’m not comfortable with the idea of a government curriculum indoctrinating children in their formative years. That is the role of a parent and currently, they have a choice as to what their child will receive in daycare, and what their child won’t.
I live in Quebec and so I have the advantage of observing our subsidized daycare system firsthand. One of the biggest mistakes the government made, in my opinion, is to charge every parent the same daily rate ($7) regardless of income instead of using a sliding scale based on revenue. It doesn’t matter whether your household income is $ 30,000 or $ 300,000 – you still pay only $7. And studies have shown (and I’ve observed this as well) that the biggest users of subsidized daycare are middle and upper-middle class families. Also, not all parents who use it work outside the home – I know of several housewives who send their kids to daycare a couple of times a week so that mommy can have ‘me time’.
Good long analysis of the subject.
I will however offer another shorter one that the liberal killjoys will understand without any doubts of what is meant.
Just as one liberal busybody once declared that the state had no business in the bedroom, I will counter to the national socialist daycare plan is intruding into another place the state does not belong in, the nursery.
The current Quebec plan is not sustanable because Quebec does not have a tax base to continue funding it. They insist that the ROC pay for their indulgences, and to legitimaize this imposition the program is adopted at the national level.
The current program goes to those the apply based on need, not to every unionized shop that wants another government handout for the same level of service to the same number of people.
Sean, for all of your points, this is the one that probably actually matters:
“And what if someone doesn’t want to put their child into daycare? They currently don’t have to pay for it, and it’s yet another cost that would be downloaded onto parents that they shouldn’t have to pay.”
This is the conservative credo and is the only argument that really matters in this discussion. Why pay any taxes then? Why contribute to EI? (Now Charles, now!)
Barbara, though I understand what you’re saying here, what you’re proposing is even more horrific in the eyes of the conservative base on this site. By charging based on affluence, you penalize the financial success of an individual. Big nono for the right of center to charge more to the rich.
For the “mommy me” time types, you should probably consider getting better friends.
The parents using my kid’s daycare are dual income households that work in the downtown core and need someone to watch their kids. Perhaps you find more abuses in suburban daycares where you might find more homemakers? Last but not least, you should know better than to mention “studies” without citing them.
Gimbol, nice talking points. Quebec’s plan has been in place for years, and our province is not crumbling under deficits. The federal conservatives on the other hand seem to have played the master hand in tabling record deficit budgets. If Quebec needs more revenue, they could raise the rates for their electricity that they export to Ontario…
The plan costs money, no question. Is the province reeling in financial ruin? Absolutely not. Our deficit is not even proportionally close to Ontario’s and yet we have this massive program in place. Imagine all that…AND during an economic lull to boot. How about when unemployment figures begin to improve?
Also, since I don’t want to miss anything, I guess the whole point about the 20-30 minute commute is that this will always be a problem in a rural area. It’s the opportunity cost I guess of actually having the service in place. Given the lack of supply, what is the going rate for a spot in a private daycare in Chatham? What’s the price per day, month? For the 2-3 minutes of research that I did on Chatham Ontario and daycare, I was able to gather the following:
-There are few daycares
-They are expensive
If you could have more daycares available and the cost would be lower to you, and the opportunity cost is a 20-30 minute drive, what is the problem? (Keep in mind that the suburban/urban readers can cummute upwards of an hour each way to work and I have American counterparts that double that figure to get to work)
And I apologize for not including this in the last post but Barbara, if subsidized daycare is widely used by the middle and upper class, how is that worse than the current system where the only people that can use a daycare are the people that can afford to pay 28-35$ per day? I would not call those rates attractive to the middle class or working class either.
It concerns me anytime a politician of any party says they want to use our tax money for national daycare. What about the people living in rural areas or the people working weekend or shift work. Their tax money will be going to fund a program that they will not be able to use. Example: a single mother who works nights/weekends at Tim Hortons, is a nurse, or waitress, daycare will not be available for them. This will only benifit people who live in urban areas who work Mon-Fri 8-5.