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Ladies and gentlemen, Canada needs a change to a new government – a new government that will bring accountability to Ottawa, that will get beyond scandals, corruption and investigations, and will get on with addressing the real priorities of ordinary working people and their families. Priorities such as cleaning up government, cutting the GST, cracking down on crime, creating a Wait Times Guarantee for health care patients, and providing choice and results in child care.
This is what I want to focus on today – child care – and one particular aspect of our child care program, the community child care investment program.
Not long ago, Benjamin and Rachel were the age of these children. Before Ben and Rachel started school full time, Laureen and I used a number of different methods of child care. When Ben and Rachel were very young, Laureen stayed at home, running our home-based business. We also used informal child care provided by family and friends. Ben and Rachel have also received care at a professional daycare centre and at a pre-school. Like so many Canadian parents, Laureen and I know, first hand, the challenges that face a modern family, including the challenge of striking the right balance between work and family life, between earning a living and investing time in parenting. You always want the best for your kids – they are our future – but you have to make choices in the present. Raising kids isn’t easy. It never has been. And modern families face many new challenges. Work arrangements for men and women are more varied than ever before. They are working longer hours, spending more time getting to and from work, and often traveling on business. Child care is expensive, and quality child care is often hard to find. That is why we need a government with a plan that will actually create new child care spaces.
Today, I want to unveil details of our community child care investment program that will create 125,000 child care spaces for working parents. We will do so by providing direct assistance to employers, including both businesses and non-profit institutions. We will provide $10,000 for each child care space created. This money will go directly to assist those who make the capital investments to build new child care spaces. The money will not be funneled through politicians. It will not create a huge new bureaucracy.
Many examples of work-related child care already exist in Canada. Some are operated by companies themselves or in association with non-profit community-based operations. A tremendous example of innovation in work-related child care is where we are today, the Copper House operated by Husky Injection Molding Systems, right here in Bolton, Ontario.
We anticipate that this program will create about 25,000 new spaces each year or 125,000 spaces over five years. And it will cost $250 million a year. By encouraging the creativity and involvement of the private sector and community organizations, our plan will reduce child care waiting lists. Our community child care investment program will supplement the efforts of those who directly create child care spaces. Just as our $1,200 Choice in Child Care Allowance will go directly to parents. These two programs will work together. We will meet the increased demand for child
care spaces which will be spurred in part by the new Choice in Child Care allowance, and the greater flexibility it will give parents. Our plan will reduce child care waitlists. Child care waiting lists that have grown under the current government. I do have to remind you that Paul Martin promised universal, institutional daycare 13 years ago in the Liberal Red Book he authored. He promised it again in 1997, and in 2000, and in 2004. But we have yet to see a daycare space created. Those kids who were supposed to get the great, universal daycare program have long since grown up and are now waiting for the great, universal post-secondary education program. The fact is that this government proposes to spend a tiny fraction of the money necessary to create a universal, institutional daycare system. In fact, it proposes to spend half what we will spend and to transfer that money from one set of politicians to another, to give money to researchers and other so-called experts, to build bureaucracies.
If you support this government’s approach to this issue, you can give them a fifth chance to show results. But if you want to create 125,000 new child care spaces – real spaces you can see, real spaces parents can count on – and if you want choice in childcare for parents, then elect a new Conservative government.
On January 23rd, stand up for accountability, stand up for choice and results in child care, and stand up for Canada.
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For further information: Conservative Party Press Office (613) 755-2191
