Stephen Harper became Canada's new Prime Minister this past February. Now Canada has a Conservative party in charge instead of a Liberal one.
Stephen Harper has great plans for the children of Canada. Mr. Harper intends this June 2006 to give each family with a child under the age of 6 years, $1200. This money represents a monthly total of $100, Mr. Harper believes that this will help poor parents pay for daycare and after school care for more children. It's not gonna work.
One of the reasons the Liberal party got beat, was its 8 year failure to install a National Day Care policy, where poor parents, could be assured of reasonable cost day care. With day care costing $200-$350 per week! Our new Prime Minister thinks he can solve this with a yearly payout each June of $1200 per child.
I cannot imagine what Mr. Harper is thinking. This is even worse than his first plan of giving parents $100 per month. Poor people who receive day care supplements will now no longer receive them because of this yearly payout. Previously if you were poor, you only had to pay a percentage of your day care often as low as $8-15 dollars a day. Now this new handout from Mr. Harper will stop any government funding, and allow parents to pick up the full cost of day care with their $100 month.
I find this disgusting and unbelievable. The only thing I (and anti-poverty critics) expect is that poor people will no longer be able to afford daycare at all. What will happen I believe, is that poor parents in Canada will find themselves better off on Welfare than trying to work and pay $800/month in daycare from a $100/month handout.
Whats even worse, is that Prime Minister Harper is giving this money to parents when school is over for the year! Poor families will use this money to give their children some kind of summer, while ones with less conscience will use it for less appropriate things.....
Bottom line, we still desperately need a National Child Care program in Canada. This plan of Mr. Harpers is stupid and ridiculous.