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THE ISSUE
The family is the building block of society. Healthy families provide the love and support to raise the next generation of Canadians and care for the aged and infirm.
There are 2 million young children in Canada,1 whose families face challenges in finding child care so they can strike the right balance between work and family life. For some families, this means finding scarce day care spaces. For others, this means asking a neighbour, a relative, or a friend to look after their children while they work. There are also families who decide to keep a spouse out of the workforce while their children are young.
THE PLAN
The best role for government is to let parents choose what’s best for their children and provide parents with the resources to balance work and family life as they see fit – whether it means formal child care, informal care through neighbours or relatives, or a parent staying at home.
The Conservative plan has two components. First, we will provide a Choice in Childcare Allowance of $1,200 per year for each pre-school child. Second, we will create an annual $250 million Community Childcare Investment Program to provide capital assistance for employers and communities to create childcare spaces in the workplace or through cooperative or community associations.
A Conservative government will introduce a family support policy that gives parents true choice in child care.
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We will give all families a new $1,200 per year Choice in Child Care Allowance for each child under six, starting in 2006.
- Our plan provides money directly to parents. The Liberal plan sends money to provincial governments.
- The total cost of our plan will cost $10.9 billion over five years, which is $4.7 billion more than the Liberals are planning.
- All families will be free to use the new Choice in Child Care Allowance as they see fit. It will let parents choose the child care option that best suits their family’s needs.
- The new Choice in Child Care Allowance will be in addition to the current Canada Child Tax Benefit, the National Child Benefit Supplement, and the Childcare Expenses Deduction.
- We will roll in the current $20.25 per month supplement that now gets clawed back based on child care expenses. The new Choice in Child Care Allowance will not be clawed back from middle-income families. Instead, it will be taxed in the hands of the lower-income spouse
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In addition, we will help employers and communities create child care spaces in the workplace or through cooperative or community associations by establishing a Community Childcare Investment Program worth $250 million a year.
- Under the Community Childcare Investment Program, employers who create new childcare spaces for their employees, or for the wider community in collaboration with not-for-profit organizations, will be eligible to receive a credit of $10,000 per space. This program will create 25,000 new spaces per year, or 125,000 over the next five years.
- The tax credit will be designed to ensure that small businesses and rural communities will be able to access it as well as larger companies and cities.
- A Conservative government will honour the government’s existing one-year bilateral commitments to provinces for institutional childcare.
- The new Choice in Child Care Allowance will give families an estimated $2.5 billion per year in extra income ― in addition to the Canada Child Tax Benefit and National Child Benefit Supplement. The fiscal impact will be somewhat less.2
Our plan supports the choices of all parents, regardless of where they live, regardless of income, and regardless of whether they choose to work or stay home with their children.
Our plan will help low-income families, but provides assistance to all families with young children. Our new Choice in Childcare Allowance will be taxable in the hands of the lower-income spouse.
Our plan supports all parents equally. Our plan is universal and equitable to all families. We will give money directly to all parents so they can make their own child care choices.
THE CHOICE
The Liberal government has promised to spend $5 billion to build a national system of institutional child care. The Liberal plan supports only one choice ― 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. institutional child care ― and excludes hundreds of thousands of parents, including shift workers, low-income parents, parents who live in rural areas, and stay-at-home parents.
The Liberals and the NDP believe that the only answer to expanding child care in Canada is their one-size-fits-all plan to build a massive childcare bureaucracy. Only the Conservatives believe in freedom of choice in child care. Only the Conservatives will provide cash payments to all families with small children.
Only the Conservatives will provide a Choice in Child Care Allowance that parents will see. Only the Conservatives will initiate a Community Childcare Investment Program to provide capital assistance that will create 125,000 new childcare spaces.
1. At present, there are roughly 2,086,000 children of pre-school age in Canada.
2. Parents spending their Choice in Child Care Allowance in the economy will generate tax revenue for federal and provincial governments. In addition, the Allowance will be considered income, not clawed back like the National Child Benefit Supplement and Canadian Child Tax Benefit.
