Child Care

The parties have different proposals for child care. 

The Conservatives won't be providing any spaces.  Instead, it'll be cash.  Their Universal Child Care Benefit will provide parents with $180 per month for each kid under six, and $60 per month for each kid older than six.

The Liberals will also provide cash.  Their Canada Child Care Benefit is means tested.  So, lower income households get more cash.  They have a number generater on their website somewhere.  Some random numbers from it are:  for households making $50G, for one kid under six they'll get $420/month.  For $80G, it'll be $296 per month.  For $125G, it'll be $180 per month.  For $140G, it's a $140/month.  For $160G, it's $90 per month.  It reaches zero by $200G.

The Libs also say they're going to provide child care spaces.  This too will be means tested.  Trudeau hasn't announced details of this yet, but it is spelled out in the Liberal Policy Resolution #3 (Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) Program).  This resolution cites "restoring the bilateral agreements of the previous Liberal Government with the provinces and the territories" that Dryden did under Martin as the Liberal's child care policy.  These bilateral agreements together were for one billion dollars a year ($5 billion over 5 years), according to this report.   The resolution does say, "increasing federal funding for ECEC to 1% of GDP", so it's remotely possible that the Liberal plan could have similar numbers to the NDP plan.  I'm pretty doubtful, given how high their "Canada Child Care Benefit" is, though.

Further details to come, presumably. 

The NDP will also provide cash, in that they'll allow the Conservative's Universal Child Care Benefit to continue (so, $180 per month for each kid under six, and $60 per month for each kid older than six).

The NDP will also provide funding for child care spaces.  The charge for the spaces will be $15 a day (modelled on Quebec's child care system).  The NDP's child care proposal was reported to have the following figures:

So, the Cons will provide cash only.  The Libs will provide more cash and some child care spaces.  And the NDP will provide some cash (same as the Cons but less than the Libs) and a whole lotta child care spaces (a million over eight years). 

ETA:  The Greens is here:  http://www.greenparty.ca/en/policy/vision-green/people/child-care

Your conclusions are wrong. The Liberals are rolling together existing Conservative benefits into one benefit and making it means tested so wealthy families receive less or none and less wealthy families receive more.

The NDP is leaving the existing Conservative child benefits in place.

The amounts you cite for the NDP seem off by the following:

In its first year in power, an NDP-led government would kick in $290 million for 60,000 spaces. That amount would grow to $1.86 billion in 2018, which the party says would create 370,000 new child-care spots.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/ndp-says-quality-affordable-child-care-j...

The article you quoted from also states:

There are those at the conference who feel the NDP’s proposal isn’t ambitious enough. At more than $8.3 billion, the NDP plan falls short of what some advocates here argue the government should spend: one per cent of GDP on child care, or about $18 billion.

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/justin-trudeau-tom-mulcair-childcare

The policy resolution you quoted states:

BE IT RESOLVED that a Liberal Government institute a Universal ECEC Program with national standards and monitoring mechanisms, by restoring the bilateral agreements of the previous Liberal Government with the provinces and the territories; increasing federal funding for ECEC to 1% of GDP;

Your suggestion that funding would remain the same as in 2005 is wrong. In fact the policy resolution matches what childcare advocates say is required. The NDP plan falls far short of that.

That is just a policy resolution not a platform plank so there is no guarantee that is what they will eventually propose but it shows that there is plenty of room to do better than the NDP has.

Daycare experts and parent groups will have something to say on whatever plans are put forward.

The Conservatives will declare both plans financially unsupportable.

Will the NDP attack a more ambitious Liberal plan as unaffordable?

Thanks Pondering.  Yeah, seems that with the NDP it's only after some years that the amount becomes $5B a year.  But it doesn't start out that way.  Time to correct that.

Yeah, in the same way that the NDP have rejected income splitting, which is another Tory trap to reduce revenue, they should have continually rejected the benefit payoffs as well while promoting child care.  But, hard to say if now it would be saleable to take something away that people have had for years.  If a decent universal child care program can be implemented without having to take the gift away, then that seems the safest bet.

So let's not "bash" them. But do we need to pay them?

You, yourself just said they "choose to do so of they're own free will".

Just one more example of how Liberals actually govern versus the blow hard propaganda we read here and elsewhere from blow-hard, hot air, LPC shills, http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-government-to-cut-74m-in-d...

Liberals will ALWAYS balance budgets on the backs of the most vulnerable, they know NO other way!

Yep, the LIbs are no damn good. They ALWAYS cut Social Spending. Its how they roll. REAL PROGRESSIVES DON'T VOTE LIBERAL!

Interesting.  It was moderated by Judy Rebick.  Cool to see Alexa McDonough call out the Liberals on their all talk no action legacy.

Eww.  I favour universality.  Access to education, health care, child care, policing services, fire protection, sanitation, etc., should be universal.

Generally if something isn't deemed a universal right, then it's given less importance, and becomes easier to cut (see Art's post #11 which talks about the current Quebec Lib gov't that changed their universal child care into a means tested program and are now proceeding to try to implement cuts to it -- not good).

Regardless, even though the NDP favour universality, the NDP have said that they likely will allow some flexibility, and that if a province wants to set up a means tested child care system, the NDP would not reject that outright. Not ideal in my opinion, but so be it.

Are you sure that you know what "universal" means, Pondering? 

Universal access to health care means everyone gets access, and it's not means tested. It doesn't mean that everyone gets to have a family doctor. I'm sure that, living in Quebec, you know this all too well. 

The Quebec child care system has always been universal, though like health care, it can be hard to access because funding is short of demand. (Unlike health care, where the regions are far worse off, I think Montrealers have the hardest time finding subsidized child care spots, though I could be wrong here.) Sadly the appalling government we have in place has seen fit to undermine the system and break all its previous promises on child care. 

Their newest cuts, by the way, are raising the cost of all spots in the after-school child care in the schools, which all schools have to provide by law. 

Mulcair daycare.

Here's the media backgrounder that more thoroughly outlines the NDP's child care proposal.  Support for the claim that investments in child care can economically benefit society are here in this TD report:  http://goo.gl/xgwPu

I found this document from a link from a Conservative attack site, which claimed that the NDP was making promises it could not afford.  The Liberals have been making similar claims.  It's interesting how these claims always come up when it's social spending, but never when it's tax cuts (IE, you never hear, "how can we afford to lose this revenue?").  People should not be taken in by the claims of Libs and Cons that government cannot afford social services (IE, with Libs saying that only short term deficit spending on infrastructure can be undertaken by government, or both Cons and Libs saying that tax cuts are the answer for the economy).  With proper administration of our resources and finances, government can of course live up to its responsibilities.

Yeah, there's a lot of social media spin on government services like child care.  I saw a lot of Lib/Con spin about "affordability" on the article Tom Mulcair pledges funding for women's shelters.  Shocking that Lib and Con supporters would think that denying such investments can be justified on the basis of "affordability", and yet don't question the affordability of their often proposed tax cuts (IE, corporate tax decreases or increasing exemptions on capital gains) at all. Just look at the comments section. 

Here's an article on new regulations for Ontario child care providers.  It will make it more difficult for parents.  I don't disagree with having the industry be better regulated, but it does point out how sorely needed the greater funding that the NDP are promising is needed.

 Saying there was no money for shelters is bullshit, the state has the obiligation to help and protect those in need. I supported additional resources for women's shelters. The area I disagreed with the NDP policy was that there was nothing for abused men, not a dime for an abused men's shelter was offered. Not a dime.

There is a difference between equality and equity.