Families Minister Jenna Sudds says provinces and territories signed $10-a-day child care agreements with the federal government with their ‘eyes wide open,’ and Ottawa now expects them to make the program work.

  • Funderpants @lemmy.ca
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    9 months ago

    The Liberals under Martin had negotiated universal child care with all the provinces before Harper won government and scrapped it. People voted in Harper on a mandate of ‘parents choice’ and as a result we got child tax credits instead. Tax credits, of course, gave lots of money to the already wealthy and almost nothing to lower and middle income Canadians.

    It was Trudeau and the Liberals who replaced the child tax credits with the Canada Child benefit, a tax free, monthly, progressive benefit that goes up as your income goes down. On top of that, they negotiated with the provinces again to fund ten dollar a day childcare on a cost split arrangement. Feds/Prov/parents. The feds and the parents are keeping their part of the deal, but provinces like Alberta are not. Here in PEI the program is working (I have first hand knowledge of this from inside a not-for-profit childcare ) because the provincial government is doing its part and making its contribution.

    This failing in Conservative provinces is the fault of, surprise surprise, Conservative government.

    The idea that Liberals want social programs to fail is laughable, honestly, not an argument one can make in good faith.