LETTER

Child care spaces, just more promises?

 

The announcement by Families, Children, and Social Development Minister Jean-Yves Duclos  last week did little to ease concerns of parents. The Liberals hope their plan will create 40,000 child care spaces over the next three years, but they don’t actually have a plan to achieve their target.  

The bilateral agreements the federal government intends to sign with the provinces and territories won’t stipulate that new spaces must be created and won’t create parity between existing provincial and territorial programs. This will result in a patchwork system across the country that won’t meet the needs of the majority of Canadian families.

The Prime Minister admitted in March that the Liberals would be skimming $195 million off the top of the fund to conduct ill-defined child care research projects. And when Minister Duclos was asked when families would start to see the benefits of this funding, he would only say that “between now and approximately 2020, there will be significant impacts.”  Families struggling to make ends meet today can’t afford to wait three more years, nor do they have any faith in ambiguous and likely empty Liberal promises.

Karen Vecchio, MP
Conservative Critic for Families, Children and Social Development
Ottawa