Another February 6th, and for those of us in the child care community, it’s a time to reflect on Canada’s close-but-no-cigar national child care program. You remember, right?

Everyone knows the story -- after years of advocacy for a national child care program, it seemed that one would really materialize. But the story ended with a clunk for children and families when the Harper Conservatives won the January 2006 federal election and cancelled the bilateral agreements between the federal government and the provinces/territories that Ken Dryden had spent months negotiating.