Melanie_

Emerson ran under the Liberal banner, and it was the Liberal party that paid his campaign expenses, etc. Switching so soon after the election makes one wonder how long he had been planning to defect, and if he ran under false pretenses. Running for one party while intending to represent another? wellandboy, your link took me to the Microsoft home page!

One of the most unfortunate economic fallacies is to believe that someone doing housework is not in the workforce.The effort and services provided around the house are just as important to the economy as the services produced while working in a bank. Unfortunately, we don't have a monetary measure of household services. Worse, we have a bias in the system which encourages people to leave household work and choose paid employment (which may well be of less economic value to society). Melanie, it would be prohibitively expensive (Canadian taxpayers are not prepared to fork over the money) to have a day care spot for every child in Canada. By creating a partial system, we are in effect taxing the stay-at-home parents and subsidizing the out-and-about parents. Do you think that's fair? If subsidy there must be, should it not go to poor parents? OK, I'll admit I was over the top yesterday with the "barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen" comment. August, I do value the work that goes in to maintaining a household - it takes up just as much time as my day job, and I take pride in doing it (of course, I wouldn't mind if my husband and kids also took some pride in doing it, but I digress). But I also need my income, seeing as how no one is offering to pay me to stay home; and I think I can contribute to society by combining both. In answer to your question, yes, subsidy should go to poor parents. The $1200 doesn't do that - in fact, the people who benefit from it the most are the single income two parent families earning in excess of $100,000 per year. I've posted the link to the Caledon Institute of Social Policy twice already in other threads about this. I really don't think we need a spot for every child in Canada. What we need is a system that is flexible enough to meet the needs of those families who do need care; what I really hate here is how we've created a dichotomy of parenting, equating "good" parents with those who stay home and "bad" parents with those who work to support their families. When we talk about government involvement, what is it that we mean? For me, the most important consideration is that the people who care for the kids are warm and nurturing, which can't be regulated, but also that there are standards that are met - Criminal Records checks, Child Abuse Registry checks, fire and safety precautions taken, and an understanding of what is best for children. The Conservative plan has no accountability for how the money is spent, and I keep hearing people like Bryan here saying the government shouldn't put one penny into child care. No regulation at all is not good for the kids, and no subsidies at all is just going to strain the welfare system. Just to be clear, I have no children in child care, as they are past the age of needing it. I have a grandchild who may need it in the future, and I hope it will be available for her if the need arises.

Only three provinces ended up signing 5 year deals - Ontario, Quebec, and Manitoba. The rest signed one year deals, so they probably will just not be renewed - the 5 year deals should be honoured. The money was to supplement the provinces' budgets, as the child care system is different in each province, and can best be managed at the provincial level. I assume that Quebec poured their share into their $7.00/day program (not the best model, in my opinion, although I realize many others do think it is); I don't know what Ontario did with theirs, they may have sent it on to municipalities, who I believe administer child care. In Manitoba, $11.5 million went to increase operating grants to centres and family child care providers to increase wages, hopefully keeping people in the jobs; 2.9 million went to recruitment, training, and student aid to attract people to the field; $5.75 million went to open 3100 new child care spaces; and $2.75 million has been set aside to help renovate or build new facilities. Parents still pay $18.80/day for care - it is not free, which is another point many of you choose to ignore. One of the biggest problems traditionally has been that child care is a low paying job. Parents can't afford to spend their whole paycheque giving someone else a paycheque, so the people who work with the kids are the ones who subsidize the system. This leads to inconsistency of care for children, because caregivers take higher paying jobs doing something else as soon as they can. The $1200 (taxable) is a great idea, and I hope it goes through. Lets call it something like... oh, I don't know... Family Allowance? But lets not call it a child care cheque, because it isn't about child care. Giving a company a $10,000 tax credit to build a centre will hardly scratch the surface; I don't see it as much of an incentive. Construction alone, with the kind of safety standards required, will be 10 times this tax credit, never mind the ongoing maintenence and overhead. How many small businesses with 30 employees are going to take that on? The Conservatives plan doesn't address the real needs of families - instead it tells mothers they really shouldn't be in the workforce anyway, so stay home pregnant, barefoot and in the kitchen. Next time any of you are in a bank, school, office building, factory, etc, look around and ask yourself where this business would be if all the women of childbearing age were not there. And don't come back and tell me that you support fathers staying home, too - the climate this program creates is definitely aimed at mothers, and I doubt very much that fathers are prepared to stay home until their children are old enough to be left alone (in most provinces, I believe legally that is age 12).

Betsy, the problems you are talking about are part of the system Alberta has chosen. That doesn't have to be the way child care is delivered; much better models exist. Geoffrey, I believe some businesses will take advantage of the tax benefits, and I'm not opposed to this at all. But I doubt they will fill the need the way a coordinated effort from a provincial government could. Many small businesses may only have a handful of employees who need child care, and it won't be worth it to them to set up a centre; large businesses like those I mentioned earlier would have to set up too many centres in too many jurisdictions with different regulations and standards. Most parents would rather have their child care in their community, anyway, rather than in an industrial park or in a strip mall downtown. Locating centres in schools works very well, and is certainly more convenient when kids are in that half day kindergarten year. Leafless, June Cleaver was a myth. Get over it.

The Harper plan of giving tax breaks to businesses will not work. I sat in on a conference call last Monday between child care advocates and business leaders (reps from Microsoft, Canadian Tire, TransCanada Pipelines, and the Royal Bank) to discuss the business community's role in developing a child care system. They were all very supportive of working families, but when directly asked if they would make use of the tax incentives to set up child care for their employees, none answered, and the topic was quickly diverted. When asked what they do currently for their employees who need child care, they talked about flexible hours and working from home (try doing that with a two year old; I also wonder how many jobs really offer that kind of option); Canadian Tire declined to answer at all. Businesses are in the business of making money. Tax breaks to start a daycare are good for the year they build the centre; they provide no sustainability of funding, and businesses are not likely to want to incur the kind of continuing expenses that daycare brings. Betsy, I've been doing some reading about the state of child care in Alberta, and I can't blame you for being discouraged. Alberta is dismal in comparison to the rest of the country. Go to http://www.childcarecanada.org/ and check out the short paper on trends and analysis, or click on the long paper on Early Childhood Education and Care in Canada 2004 - you can download a synopsis of each province. With 51,700 mothers with children under the age of 2 in the paid workforce, and 44,500 mothers with children under the age of 5 in the paid workforce, there are only about 33,000 available full time regulated child care spaces in the province. And only 10,614 children qualify for subsidy. Staff are paid embarrassingly low, and fees are higher than here in Manitoba. One thing that Alberta does have that I found interesting is the Kin Child Care Funding, which provides parents with subsidies to pay non resident blood relatives to care for their kids if they are working nontraditional hours.

Under the Liberal plan, parents would still pay for child care. I can't believe how many times I've said this on this forum, yet most of you choose to ignore it. The Liberal plan was to create flexible spaces throughout the country, following the QUAD principles (Quality, Universality, Accessibility, Developmental). This doesn't mean it is free. It means that it is available. $1200 is all well and good, but if there is no one to take care of the kids there is no benefit to working families. The actual amount of money committed by each party is virtually the same.

Football?? Have I wandered into the wrong forum???

One of the things that people criticized the Liberals about so much was their paternalistic attitude, not taking the will of the people into account when they made decisions "for the good of the country". Now we see the Conservatives do the same thing: "Oh, Vancouver didn't elect a Conservative, but we know they really must have meant to, so we will just fix that for them." Why bother having elections if the governing party can just change the outcome as they choose?

This makes me wonder if this is a new Conservative election tactic. Recruit candidates to run under another party's banner, then once they are elected let them show their true colours. Must be comforting to know you have double the chance of winning a seat if you can hide a candidate in another party's platform.

Yikes, I'm posting at work! The people of Emerson's riding voted for him based on the campaign and platform of the Liberals. This is a betrayal of their trust. If they had wanted a Conservative MP, they would have elected one - 2 weeks ago! What was the basis of his campaign? How long has he been planning this crossover? He has treated the people of his riding like fools, and I doubt they will forget that soon.

Good old Sodom and Gommorah. It was OK for Lot to offer his virgin daughters to the crowd, then commit incest with them, but Heaven forbid homosexuality.

We're seeing this played out again here in Winnipeg this week. Rani Sandhu, a 21 year old Canadian citizen, travelled with her husband and 10 month old daughter to Punjab last week. Once they were there, her husband called her relatives here and said she had died of a heart attack, and had already been cremated. Her family hasn't heard from the husband since. This death is suspicious, and the Canadian government has an obligation to all the citizens of Canada to press hard to find out the truth. You are right that we can't conduct the investigation, but we also need to pressure those who can to dig for the truth and lay charges if warranted. Sorry, I tried to make a link to the story in the Winnipeg Free Press, but you can't access it if you aren't a subscriber.

I read the article, betsy, and I'm not sure what your point is. There was no one underage mentioned in the story, so I don't see how it relates to pedophilia, the topic of this thread. Maybe your real issue here needs to be with the media for the way they reported the story, not the people who engaged in consensual sex in a semi public place.

I'm teaching a course right now on challenges children and families face (divorce, blended families, single parenting, etc.) and gave this article to the class today. The biggest concern they had was with the word "queer", as they felt it wasn't respectful of gay and lesbian families and gave a negative connotation. We had some discussion about how students felt about the other words, and what age group they felt the poster was appropriate for (general consensus was middle school to high school), but no real problems with the idea of same sex parenting. I'm ordering a poster for the next time! Thanks for the article, T-Bag!

Congratulations, Greg. Enjoy that new baby!

I read the Free Press every day as well, and it has gone more and more Conservative lately. Thank god they've dumped Charles Adler, but they still have Tom Oleson, bringing the right wing agenda to the editorial board. The Sun is a rag; it doesn't even attempt to be objective. Its more about sensationalism than reporting.

I didn't mean to imply you are anti-woman; sorry if it came across that way. I just meant to point out that parents are necessary in the workforce, and most often people expect mothers to stay home rather than fathers. I don't really think that having working parents means that a child's upbringing is being sacrificed, especially if we have good child care options that give kids quality care while recognizing the central role of families in their lives. Not every kid has a grandma who is available - I know, I am a grandma! That is why a regulated system, that ensures caregivers pass the Child Abuse registry, have first aid training, and have a basic understanding of child development, is needed. The reality is families often need two incomes; they need a system that they can trust to provide good care for their kids.

I don't think it has to be. Parents still pay the bulk of the cost of child care; the provinces provide the licensing and regulating already. The federal money would have allowed for expansion of the system, but it wouldn't have changed the fact that parents are responsible for most of the costs. I agree that child care isn't an economic engine, but it does allow the engine to function. Next time you go into a bank, or a school, or an office building, look around at all of the women in their 20's and ask yourself what would happen if they all decided to have kids and stay at home. And if I remember correctly you are a student - look around your university and ask yourself why all these women are pursuing post secondary education. Our economy is booming and we need women in the workforce. It isn't viable to say they should all stop working when they have children.

You're going to with either party. Is it better to build a regulated system so that when you do have kids, if you do need to access child care, it will be available? Or is it better to fund an underground economy of unlicensed providers who parents take their chances with? Staying at home is the best option. I did it for a number of years, when my younger kids were small. But it isn't always viable for everyone, regardless of the tired and trite assumptions about SUVs and trips to Cuba. Parents put an awful lot back into the economy; some support to enable them to do so isn't that much to ask.

Again, look at the numbers from the Caledon Institute. The Conservative plan benefits the rich much more than the poor. The Liberal plan doesn't give anyone free child care, as far as I am aware. Here in Manitoba, it allowed for increased operating grants to licensed programs (centre and family child care based) so the staff could have raises without increasing fees (parents currently pay $18.80/day for a preschool child). It also allowed for 3100 new spaces to open in urban, rural and Northern settings. It also provided training grants for post secondary education in Early Childhood programs. When Harper rescinds that money in June, the spaces will close, the grants will dry up, and the raises will be reversed (unless parent fees go up, which is a distinct possibility seeing as how parents will supposedly have another $1200 for child care). One of the arguments I have heard here over and over is that institutionalized care is going to produce a nation of government brainwashed little socialists. I wonder who you think is working in these programs? Or who you think is running them? Having a small amount of government funding, and a licensing and monitoring system in place, doesn't make a child care centre a mini gulag. A non profit centre is run by a parent board of directors, who decide policy and procedure for their children, hire and fire staff, and ensure any money is rolled back into the program. A private centre is accountable only to the owner, and the owner's bank account.

Thats right, only rich people should procreate. The working class should just be drones for the rich.

Of course child care is a parental responsibility; I don't think parents are abdicating their responsibilities to their children when they work for a living. But if they are to work, they need affordable, safe, appropriate care for their children - each province has a system in place to ensure that is available. Basically, the Liberal plan was to enhance that system, broaden it, make it more widely available; the Conservative plan is to say every parent for themself, find whatever you can, and we will give you a token amount to help pay for it.

Please look at my numbers again. The Conservative plan doesn't help reduce the cost of child care; the people who don't use child care benefit the most. And there is no attempt in the Conservative plan to fully pay the care for people in the lowest income brackets (an issue for another debate ). Child care is supposed to be a provincial responsibility, so the Liberal plan to send money to the provinces to enhance the current systems made sense. Its what Harper claims he is going to do about every other provincial responsibility, yet in his first few months he will contradict himself by revoking the bilateral agreements, going around the provinces, and creating his own federal "child care" (if you want to call it that) plan.

Here's some numbers about what that $1200 would really look like for different family structures. I posted this in another thread, I think it was called Confused and Concerned. When you take into account the taxes paid on the money, the lost GST rebate, and the lost Child Tax Credit, this is what it would look like. I know some of you disputed the numbers, but I haven't seen any recaluculations yet.

Absolutely the immigration system needs to be held accountable; if someone has come here and committed a violent crime, we have no obligation to allow them to stay; nor do we have an obligation to take in someone who poses a credible risk. The justice system also has to bear some responsibility, as often the criminals you are talking about are not immigrants at all, but people born here in Canada, whether to immigrants or not. All the other factors that may be contributing to crime (poverty, inequality of opportunity, bored affluence, adolescent peer cohesion, real or perceived sense of injustice, etc.) don't excuse the crime. What bothers me is the talk about the "ethnic communities" not condemning the criminal actions enough - to do this would be to imply that these crimes are somehow connected to their ethnicity. Criminals are criminals, regardless of the colour of their skin, and should be tried, convicted, locked up, deported, whatever, based on their actions, not their skin colour.