• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Fate of national daycare in the hands of Canadian voters

September 2, 2021 by David Barret Leave a Comment

September 2, 2021

By Julie Gordon

OTTAWA (Reuters) – Canadians will face a stark choice on how to tackle a childcare crisis when they go to the polls on Sept. 20, with the ruling Liberals vowing to push ahead with a subsidized daycare system and the rival Conservatives offering tax credits to parents.

The dire need for affordable, reliable childcare in Canada was laid bare by the coronavirus pandemic, as daycare and school closures forced many parents, mostly women, to cut back work hours or leave jobs to care for children, hurting productivity.

More than 48% of Canadian parents have struggled to find affordable childcare, a recent Statistics Canada study found, prompting 27% of them to delay a return to work and 41% to change work schedules.

Public support for a national childcare program is high, with more than 70% of Canadians in favor, according to an Angus Reid poll. Support is strongest among women and left-leaning Canadians, key voting blocs for the center-left Liberals who are in a neck-and-neck https://ift.tt/3yzcjHL race with the Conservatives.

“What the pandemic served to do was it really just made the challenges of trying to balance childcare with paid work so glaring,” said Morna Ballantyne, executive director of Child Care Now, which advocates for publicly funded childcare. “Women were dropping out of the paid labor force.”

Mothers of young children saw a huge jump in unemployment during the pandemic, and continue to lag their male counterparts in recovering those losses. The labor participation rates for women with children are also far lower than for male parents. Getting those women working is key to Canada’s economic growth, economists say.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals say their C$30 billion ($23.8 billion) plan to vastly lower daycare fees by ensuring an average cost of C$10-a-day and creating 250,000 new childcare spots over five years will help do that. The Liberal plan is being implemented in seven of the 10 provinces and one of the three Canadian territories.

The Conservatives, out of power since losing a 2015 election, have said that if they win this month’s vote, they will cancel those deals and instead offer payments of up to C$6,000 a year, based on income, to help parents pay for their daycare of choice.

The two main parties’ divergent approaches could make childcare a deciding factor in key electoral ridings, particularly in Vancouver and Toronto, where center-based daycare spots are notoriously hard to find and childcare can cost families thousands of dollars each month.

Kerry Liu, a Toronto-area father whose youngest child will be starting kindergarten this year, said daycare was a huge expense for his family and the Liberals’ plan is definitely a key consideration for him in the election.

“For two kids it’s almost C$3,000 (a month). So I believe C$10-a-day will benefit a lot of parents,” he said. “That’s going to be a big game-changer.”

The median cost for toddler care for one child in Toronto is C$1,578 a month. That drops to C$210 a month under the Liberal plan compared with C$1,178 a month for a middle-income family under the Conservative plan, according to Reuters’ calculations.

For a graphic on Canada election: daycare costs:

https://ift.tt/3jAYVPh

“We’re going to help all parents, all parents, immediately” whether they use public daycare or not, Conservative leader Erin O’Toole said when he launched his election platform last month.

POSSIBLE WEDGE ISSUE

Business groups, which typically are concerned about excessive government spending, prefer the tax-credit approach because subsidized care is more costly.

But Trudeau’s national daycare strategy is “popular across the board” with voters, said Nik Nanos, head of Nanos Research, and could be a wedge issue in tight races, particularly in urban centers where both parents typically work.

“If you’re in downtown Toronto or downtown Vancouver, you want to run against the Conservatives on vaccinations and childcare,” Nanos said, referring to the two main parties’ divergence over mandated COVID-19 vaccinations.

Trudeau, who hopes high COVID-19 vaccination rates and a strong economic rebound will help him win a majority government on Sept. 20, has mandated the shots for federal workers https://ift.tt/2UDy4bw and all his candidates https://ift.tt/3mVGgjl. O’Toole opposes the mandates.

But the chaotic situation last month in Afghanistan, where Canada struggled to evacuate its citizens, has left Trudeau’s Liberals sagging in the polls and well below the 170 seats needed for a majority in the House of Commons. Canada’s economy also performed worse https://ift.tt/3mURNPL than expected in the second quarter.

The Liberals, who currently rely on the support of opposition parties to pass legislation, are favored by 31% of voters versus 34% for the Conservatives, according to a new Nanos Research poll. The left-leaning New Democrats, who also support national daycare, are at 20%.

Many childcare advocates back the Liberal plan. They say Canada needs more daycare spots, lower fees for parents and more job security for childcare workers.

“A tax credit to parents … is not going to address any of those issues,” said Kerry McCuaig, a fellow in early childhood policy at the University of Toronto’s Atkinson Centre.

($1 = 1.2598 Canadian dollars)

(Reporting by Julie Gordon in Ottawa; Additional reporting by Steve Scherer; Editing by Paul Simao)

Source Link Fate of national daycare in the hands of Canadian voters

David Barret
David Barret

Related posts:

  1. EU must create rapid reaction force, top officials say
  2. Islamic State ‘Beatle’ to plead guilty to U.S. terrorism charges
  3. Rocky Mountain dry: Canada’s waning water supply sows division in farm belt
  4. Number of people with dementia set to jump 40% to 78 million by 2030 -WHO

Filed Under: News

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

  • First Ever Fatal Bear Attack In Florida Leads To The Deaths Of 3 Black Bears
  • Pathogenic Fungal Spores Found Surviving Miles Above Our Heads In Earth’s Stratosphere
  • “Alchemy” In Action As CERN Detects Lead Atoms Turning Into Gold
  • When Did The Earth’s Magnetic Field Form?
  • Who Were The Mysterious “Sea Peoples”, Destroyers Of The Ancient Empires?
  • Galaxy’s Extreme Core Might Have A Whole New Source Of Ghostly Particles
  • 20 Years Of “Very Concerning” Data Concludes Cats Can Catch Bird Flu And Could Pass It To Humans
  • The Ancient Pythagorean “Cup Of Justice” Pranks Users If They Fill It With Too Much Wine
  • When It Comes To Pain, The Nocebo Effect Beats The Placebo Effect
  • English Speakers Obey This Quirky Grammar Rule, Even If They Don’t Know It
  • How Is The Black, White, And Secret Third Smoke Made During The Conclave?
  • Can Children Help Each Other Pass The Famous Marshmallow Test?
  • California’s Highest-Altitude Tree Found By Happy Accident At 12,657 Feet
  • Is The Spiny Devil Katydid The Strangest Insect In The World? You Tell Us
  • Yep, You Can Milk A Snake – These Scientists Extract Venom From Some Of The Deadliest Snakes
  • The Last Remaining Soft Tissues Of A Dodo Date To 1683 CE – And Are Still Going Strong
  • This Indigenous Tribe Has Tragically Forgotten How To Dance, Sing Lullabies And Make Fire
  • Nepal’s Snow Leopard Population Is Bigger Than Previously Thought, But Still Mysterious
  • The Amazon’s “Dark Earth” Was Created By Ancient People Thousands Of Years Ago
  • Watch A Gorgeous White Stingaree Swimming Along The Seafloor
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version