$100 a month per child

Figleaf · February 20, 2007

You would think our health care system would have taught some lessons. Oh! I forgot, lefties think failure is success!!!!

Speaking as a rational centrist, I would rather have our system than people going without health care or being bankrupted by serious illness.

BayLee · February 20, 2007

Speaking as a rational centrist, I would rather have our system than people going without health care or being bankrupted by serious illness.

Very well said fig

The number one reason for Americans declaring bankruptcy is not being able to pay medical bills

southerncomfort · February 20, 2007

You would think our health care system would have taught some lessons. Oh! I forgot, lefties think failure is success!!!!

Speaking as a rational centrist, I would rather have our system than people going without health care or being bankrupted by serious illness.

So would I but I sure don't support paying for day care for people who have more kids than they can afford.

Wilber · February 20, 2007

You would think our health care system would have taught some lessons. Oh! I forgot, lefties think failure is success!!!!

Speaking as a rational centrist, I would rather have our system than people going without health care or being bankrupted by serious illness.

Trouble is, in our system people are starting to go without decent healthcare because the system as it is can't cope. I've mixed feelings on the daycare issue. In principal, I am not in favour of subsidized daycare but the pragmatist in me says that we will have to either somehow increase our birth rate or further increase immigration levels, otherwise we will become a nation of geriatrics.

noahbody · February 20, 2007

The government does have a plan to create daycare spaces, which is practical. Paul Martin was promising universal daycare for everyone. Stop to think how much this would cost. It would be the biggest boondoggle of all time.

As far as the $100 per child per month goes, as a parent it helps. It's basically family allowance, not a new concept, but worthwhile.

Melanie_ · February 20, 2007

The government does have a plan to create daycare spaces, which is practical. Paul Martin was promising universal daycare for everyone. Stop to think how much this would cost. It would be the biggest boondoggle of all time.
As far as the $100 per child per month goes, as a parent it helps. It's basically family allowance, not a new concept, but worthwhile.

Care to explain this practical plan? So far, no spaces have been created, and no plan has been outlined for how they will be created in the future. There is some vague idea that businesses will jump on board, but none seem to be interested.

I have posted this link and quote before, but it seems relevent again.

Making Space for Child Care

We know that capital money alone to employers does little or nothing to create sustainable ELCC programs. Incentives to employers are not the answer for early learning and child care. In 1998, Ontario introduced the Workplace Child Care Tax Incentive, which provided a 30% tax deduction for qualifying expenses for corporations and a 5% refundable tax credit for unincorporated businesses. No centres were created under the initiative. New Brunswick, Manitoba and Saskatchewan also had at one time small capital grants for workplace child care ranging from a $5,000 start-up grant in New Brunswick to a $75,000-per-centre grant in Manitoba). None of these had any take-up.
~snip~

In June 2006, the Globe and Mail Report on Business published the results of its C-Suite Survey, a quarterly poll of 150 senior company officials and found that 75% say they are unlikely to take up the new federal budget's corporate tax credit of up to $10,000 for new child care spaces. A resounding majority see quality child care as an important factor in hiring and retaining people, as well as making them productive at work.

I have no beef with giving parents cash, but lets be realistic. It isn't a child care plan.

jdobbin · February 20, 2007

The government does have a plan to create daycare spaces, which is practical. Paul Martin was promising universal daycare for everyone. Stop to think how much this would cost. It would be the biggest boondoggle of all time.
As far as the $100 per child per month goes, as a parent it helps. It's basically family allowance, not a new concept, but worthwhile.

What is this plan for daycare space?

Saturn · February 22, 2007

What is this plan for daycare space?

The plan is to give employers money to open daycare spaces for their workers. So far it has produced 0 daycare spaces. Ironically, this plan copied another program that Mike Harris ran in Ontario for 6-7 years which produced 0 daycare spaces. Clearly, the Conservatives were aiming very high on this one.

Saturn · February 22, 2007

In principal, I am not in favour of subsidized daycare but the pragmatist in me says that we will have to either somehow increase our birth rate or further increase immigration levels, otherwise we will become a nation of geriatrics.

Tell women that their options are 1) to give up their lives and careers in favour of being babysitters and maids OR 2) have no children, and wait for birthrates to go up. I see a lot of women around me choose to have no children or have just 1 child because because they don't feel that they have reasonable daycare options. Since daycare has become such a politicized issue and there is no movement on this front, I guess we'll be forced to go the increased immigration route.

Saturn · February 22, 2007

For you it's not about the children, too bad.And it does little for a lot of parents.
The Price of Day Care Can Be High

Nice selective quoting but this article doesn't in any way imply that daycare is bad for kids and that parents should get cash from the government to sit home with their kids. It simply confirms previous research on the topic by pointing out that:

1) Infants are better off staying with their parents for the first year - employers (and governments) should offer longer parental leave to new parents, not force them to quit altogether and give them handouts,

2) The quality of daycare is the number one factor in the outcome for children - Quebeckers haven't done themselves a favour by rushing to create a program that makes extensive use of private basement daycares, which the researchers correctly evaluate as "mediocre",

3) Even in "mediocre" quality daycare, "the stimulation [preschoolers and toddlers] get at day care tends to make them better prepared for school than children who are home with a parent full time."

The article concludes:

Mothers and fathers should get paid time off after a baby is born, and the money should come from a government insurance program, as it does in Canada, England and other countries. Companies need to be given incentives to create more part-time jobs that don't derail careers — and then find some up-and-coming men who want those jobs. High-quality preschool programs should be available for every low-income child and perhaps universally.
Yes, this would cost money, and not a little bit. Some taxes would have to be increased, and other spending would have to be cut. (My first candidate: raise the age for Social Security retirement eligibility. Two-year-olds need more help than 66-year-olds do. But that's a column for another day.)

Fortunately, research shows that these investments can produce a nice return. They create a better-educated, healthier work force to compete with other countries over the next century.

But I prefer a much more basic argument. Why don't we just decide that our children are worth it?

Clearly, the author is arguing in favour of better access to good quality childcare for preschoolers and toddlers and for more parental leave for new parents, not in throwing parents out of the workforce and then giving them in $100/month in a pathetic effort to make up for it.

margrace · February 22, 2007

Seems to me, according to the posts on here, the government should make a law that only allows people to have sex with government permission. In that way they could control a lot of things couldn't they.

Saturn · February 22, 2007

Sitting at home is a bad lifestyle choice - it's a big waste. Good lifestyle choices should be rewarded and bad choices discouraged. So stay-at-home parents are not entitled to laziness subsidies.
Abandoning your children is a good life style choice that is good for the economy?

Abandoning your children blah blah. Your children need you less than you think. They need to socialize and play with their peers, not sit locked up at home staring at your face 24hrs a day.

Taking tax dollars from productive people and using it to subsidize work done by less productive people (i.e. people than cannot earn enough to pay the cost of daycare) is _not_ good for the economy.

Exactly. Taking tax dollars from productive people and giving it to other less productive people to stay home and be even less productive is waste all around.

There is no way in hell you are twice as productive as your co-workers whose spouses work.
You assume that all labour is equal - that is not true. A skilled engineer or doctor working a few hours a week is going to produce more wealth for the economy than someone working 40 hours flipping burgers at MacDonalds. That is why is wrong to assume that having one spouse stay at home is bad for the economy.

Not all labour is equal. However, engineers tend to marry engineers and doctors tend to marry doctors. A doctor marrying a high-school dropout is quite unusual. The wide majority of stay-at-home parents (who have a working spouse) can earn more than the cost of daycare - even a $10/hr job pays over $20K/yr, which far exceeds the daycare costs for 2 or even 3 children. However many of them feel that earning $10K or $20K or even $30K in excess of daycare costs is just not worth their time and effort. The system is already very generous to such parents and they get plenty of benefits for choosing not to work. Of course those benefits play an important role in their decision not to work because the system pays them for not working. The last thing the economy needs is more taxes to subsidize more workers quitting their jobs to stay home.

White Doors · February 22, 2007

This whole thread was started because of someone being envious of someone's else's means.

Isn't that how communism started?

Just saying. Stop worrying about peopel that are more well off than you and concentrate on making sure that you get there yourself someday.

Ironically, well heeled people pay the VAST majority of taxes in this country. So if ONE social program happens to come back and benefit them then I think that is great. They are wealthy, so more than likely they will not waste the money than alot of the so called 'poor' may.

Afterall, it's not what you make, it's what you do with it.

Alot of people here need to grow up and stop being so jealous.

August1991 · February 22, 2007

Taking tax dollars from productive people and using it to subsidize work done by less productive people (i.e. people than cannot earn enough to pay the cost of daycare) is _not_ good for the economy.
Exactly. Taking tax dollars from productive people and giving it to other less productive people to stay home and be even less productive is waste all around.

Saturn, I'm having a hard time understanding your argument.

Are you in favour of government daycare? The employees of a day care centre presumably could be doing something else with their time. By your reasoning, they are "wasting" their time just as much as a stay at home parent.

Someone has to take care of kids and for some reason, you seem to think that if that care is provided in a day care centre, that's "productive" work whereas if it takes place in a home, it's "wasteful".

More important than all of this, it seems to me that we must provide care for young children and the choice about how to do this should be left up to parents. Since young parents with children often have (relatively) low incomes, we as a society should be involved in providing material support.

I think you would agree that the best way to help someone (of sound mind) is to give them money and then let them decide how best to spend it.

My criticsm of the Universal Child Care Benefit is based on its grafting onto an existing tax system and child benefit regime. It has lead to pernicious results.

Melanie_ · February 23, 2007

I am all in favour of providing financial assistance to families. Even better, reduce their taxes by $1200/year in the first place, for every child under the age of 6, rather than giving cash out each month then raking it back as taxable income at the end of the year (Yikes! I think I've been possessed by Charles Anthony!)

But the real issue isn't the cost of care, it is the availablility of high quality care - families need somewhere to spend the money, and it isn't good enough to just let the first available stranger warehouse your child in their basement all day. Good care is hard to find; people who work with children need patience, humour, sensitivity, a good understanding of child development, the openness to work with diverse families, guidance/discipline skills that take into account children's developing self esteem, and the ability to see the world through the eyes of a child. Child care is very different from taking care of your own children, as caregivers need to respect the choices of all the parents they work with, and find a way to balance those while caring for many children. The burnout rate is high, as is the rate of people just deciding the job is too stressful for slightly over minimum wage.

I see the role of a government child care strategy to be creating and maintaining spaces through assistance in start up costs, regulating centres and family child care homes, and ensuring there are training standards met by the people who work with young children. Small operating grants and a sliding subsidy scale could help offset the cost of care, but the parents should still pay the bulk of the costs.

Spike22 · February 23, 2007

I wish I had the money in 1990 when we started to have kids. Boohoo so you get some free cash some of which is taxable. Folks we got nothin' when we had kids . We made the choice to raise kids the old fashioned way: Dad worked, Mom stayed home and raised the kids (I would have rather stayed home if my wife prefered). Yup we sacrificed the new cars so that someone else would not do the job that our maker entrusted us to do ourselves. Why is it whenever someone does something nice for someone (in this case the gov't) it is never quite good enough and they expect more all the time? Next Canadians will want nursemaids provided for free because working mom's don't have time to breast feed or use the breast pump ugh...

Riverwind · February 23, 2007

Not all labour is equal. However, engineers tend to marry engineers and doctors tend to marry doctors. A doctor marrying a high-school dropout is quite unusual.

No. But a doctor marrying someone with BA is quite common and that gives you zero marketable jobs skills unless you have skills that you did not learn in university. All of the people that I know with a stay at home spouse are people where the working spouse makes a lot more than then non working spouse and it make more economic sense to have the non-working spouse stay at home and allow the working spouse to work harder (i.e. be more productive). All the spouses that I know which have roughly equal earning capacity both end up working.

IOW - each couple is in the best position to determine how to maximize the productivity for society's benefit and there is no such thing as a single solution that suits all couples.

The wide majority of stay-at-home parents (who have a working spouse) can earn more than the cost of daycare - even a $10/hr job pays over $20K/yr, which far exceeds the daycare costs for 2 or even 3 children.

It costs money to work - you have to pay for transportation, clothing and EI and CPP. These costs alone can add up to $250/month. Daycare for a toddler in Vancouver is $800 which means a there is no way someone on minimum wage could pay for daycare with 2 kids. Even with one kid there is little justification because the stress related to working and shuttling kids to daycare is not worth the left over $400/month ($2.3/hour). Especially if the productivity of the other spouse is reduced.

The last thing the economy needs is more taxes to subsidize more workers quitting their jobs to stay home.

The last thing the economy needs is a expensive daycare system that subsidizes people who insist on choosing a lifestyle that they cannot afford on 1 income. That is why your arguments are fundementally contradictory. You want to subsidize one lifestyle choice that you approve of and you want to deny the same subsidy to people who make a lifestyle choice that you do not approve of.

Spike22 · February 23, 2007

Riverwind are you for or against the governments childcare $$$ I am more confused than usual haha.

Saturn · February 23, 2007

Saturn, I'm having a hard time understanding your argument.
Are you in favour of government daycare?

I'm in favour of any daycare that allows people to go about their lives and do their work without worrying about their kids. Kids are supposed to be a good thing, not a burden that puts you out of work (or an excuse for not working).

The employees of a day care centre presumably could be doing something else with their time. By your reasoning, they are "wasting" their time just as much as a stay at home parent.
Someone has to take care of kids and for some reason, you seem to think that if that care is provided in a day care centre, that's "productive" work whereas if it takes place in a home, it's "wasteful".

For one, it is wasteful because one daycare worker takes care of 6-8 kids, one stay-at-home parent of only 1 or 2. Is it not wasteful to have 4 doctors see as many patients as one doctor would typically see? Second, not every parent is a early childhood education grad - parents are doctors, engineers, hair dressers and bus drivers. Putting them out of work to do something outside of their area of specialization is an enormous waste.

More important than all of this, it seems to me that we must provide care for young children and the choice about how to do this should be left up to parents. Since young parents with children often have (relatively) low incomes, we as a society should be involved in providing material support.

People choose the wrong things all the time. Childcare at home is not any better than good quality daycare for kids (in fact there are indications that it's worse). Childcare at home is only beneficial for paranoid, overprotective parents, who would be better off learning to deal with their irrational fears because the kids are not going to sit home with them for life. It is also better for a young person to work and to acquire and develop the skills necessary to earn more later than to sit home, waste the opportunity to earn an income in the meantime and to develop their skills, and then enter the labour market at 35+ with no skills or badly outdated skills. Giving people money to do that is a disfavour and a bad one at that.

I think you would agree that the best way to help someone (of sound mind) is to give them money and then let them decide how best to spend it.

I agree. Give me $50K/yr on the condition that I quit my job and I'll find a good way to spend it.

My criticsm of the Universal Child Care Benefit is based on its grafting onto an existing tax system and child benefit regime. It has lead to pernicious results.

The UCCB has nothing to do with childcare. It's simply a vote-buying scheme. Lower income families with children get much more significant support from the CTB and that could have been augmented targeting the people who need it at a much lower cost, instead of handing out money to everyone with kids who can vote.

August1991 · February 24, 2007

I'm in favour of any daycare that allows people to go about their lives and do their work without worrying about their kids. Kids are supposed to be a good thing, not a burden that puts you out of work (or an excuse for not working).

With that statement Saturn, I'm going to assume you don't have kids. IME, parents always worry about their kids. And no good parent ever views their children as a "burden".

For one, it is wasteful because one daycare worker takes care of 6-8 kids, one stay-at-home parent of only 1 or 2. Is it not wasteful to have 4 doctors see as many patients as one doctor would typically see?

A parent giving up a job to take care of a child is not the same as having a doctor seeing fewer patients.

We are a rich society and we have the means to take care of our children. Even if a medical doctor chooses to stay at home for a year or two because he wants to change his daughters nappies, we can afford it.

Second, not every parent is a early childhood education grad - parents are doctors, engineers, hair dressers and bus drivers. Putting them out of work to do something outside of their area of specialization is an enormous waste.

Here, I beg to differ that the State-employees are better placed to raise children than parents themselves. First, this choice should be left up to parents. Second, a society that delegates child-rearing to State-designated professionals is a society destined to oblivion. We're humans, not ants. We have children when we know that we alone must raise them and our own personal future depends on it.

I think you would agree that the best way to help someone (of sound mind) is to give them money and then let them decide how best to spend it.
I agree. Give me $50K/yr on the condition that I quit my job and I'll find a good way to spend it.

Saturn, this is the whole issue. Assuming the government has decided to assist all posters named Saturn, the question now is whether the government will spend $50,000 painting your house pink or instead give you the $50,000 and let you decide the colour.

My criticsm of the Universal Child Care Benefit is based on its grafting onto an existing tax system and child benefit regime. It has lead to pernicious results.
The UCCB has nothing to do with childcare. It's simply a vote-buying scheme. Lower income families with children get much more significant support from the CTB and that could have been augmented targeting the people who need it at a much lower cost, instead of handing out money to everyone with kids who can vote.

Here Saturn, I largely agree with you. The Tories went with the $100 cheque because the credibility of our federal government is so low that people now only believe money deposited in their bank account.

Saturn · February 24, 2007

No. But a doctor marrying someone with BA is quite common and that gives you zero marketable jobs skills unless you have skills that you did not learn in university.

Someone with a BA has all the marketable skills he or she needs and more marketable skills than someone without a BA.

All of the people that I know with a stay at home spouse are people where the working spouse makes a lot more than then non working spouse and it make more economic sense to have the non-working spouse stay at home and allow the working spouse to work harder (i.e. be more productive).

This is precisely why they don't need government handouts. They've made the decision to forgo one income because the other spouse makes enough to support the whole family.

All the spouses that I know which have roughly equal earning capacity both end up working.

And I know women who earned roughly as much as their husbands but had kids just to have a good excuse to get out of jobs they hated. Not surprisingly they did it because their husbands earn enough to support the whole family. No need for government subsidies there either.

IOW - each couple is in the best position to determine how to maximize the productivity for society's benefit and there is no such thing as a single solution that suits all couples.

Most people think only about themselves and society's benefit is the last thing that would ever cross their minds.

It costs money to work - you have to pay for transportation, clothing and EI and CPP. These costs alone can add up to $250/month. Daycare for a toddler in Vancouver is $800 which means a there is no way someone on minimum wage could pay for daycare with 2 kids. Even with one kid there is little justification because the stress related to working and shuttling kids to daycare is not worth the left over $400/month ($2.3/hour). Especially if the productivity of the other spouse is reduced.

Parents who can't earn as much as daycare fees are precisely the worst equiped people to raise kids. The best predictor of school achievement and educational attainment of a child is maternal educational attainment. This is why children of poorly educated mothers and from low-income families benefit more from attending daycare than children from any other socio-economic group. By locking up kids with a parent who has nothing to offer and taking away the better quality parent for longer hours, you are doing kids more harm than good.

That is why your arguments are fundementally contradictory. You want to subsidize one lifestyle choice that you approve of and you want to deny the same subsidy to people who make a lifestyle choice that you do not approve of.

There is nothing contradictory about my arguments. I approve of people who make wise choices for themselves and are able to raise their own kids and I disapprove of laziness and those who imagine that they are entitled to procreate and multiply at someone else's expense.

August1991 · February 24, 2007

I approve of people who make wise choices for themselves and are able to raise their own kids and I disapprove of laziness and those who imagine that they are entitled to procreate and multiply at someone else's expense.

OMG! JerrySeinfeld has kidnapped Saturn! (Jerry, MLW doesn't pay ransom.)

Saturn · February 24, 2007

With that statement Saturn, I'm going to assume you don't have kids. IME, parents always worry about their kids. And no good parent ever views their children as a "burden".

With that statement, it's clear that you are too young to understand how much effort and responsibility goes into raising children and how much strain children put on parents and marital relationships. As if the enormous responsibility of having children isn't life shattering enough, forcing parents out of work because good quality daycare is not available is unnecessary punishment that fewer and fewer people are willing to subject themselves to. Is having children worthy of destroying a successful career, losing an income while increasing costs, and reducing an individual to the level of a babysitter locked up at home and away from her peers while putting more stress on the other because the financial health of the whole family rests entirely with him?

A parent giving up a job to take care of a child is not the same as having a doctor seeing fewer patients.
We are a rich society and we have the means to take care of our children. Even if a medical doctor chooses to stay at home for a year or two because he wants to change his daughters nappies, we can afford it.

Really? We can afford to have half our workforce sit at home changing nappies but we can't afford to pay for our children's education and give them a clean, debt-free start in life? That's pretty odd of you to say.

Here, I beg to differ that the State-employees are better placed to raise children than parents themselves. First, this choice should be left up to parents. Second, a society that delegates child-rearing to State-designated professionals is a society destined to oblivion. We're humans, not ants. We have children when we know that we alone must raise them and our own personal future depends on it.

Your doctor is such a "state" employee. So are your teachers and professors. So are the police and the military. And the guys who pick up your garbage, plow your street and test the safety of your food and water. You are nuts!

margrace · February 24, 2007

If I remember rightly, in Russia, it was the law that all children had to be put in daycare and their mothers had to work for the state.

On here I have heard that stay at home mothers are just lazy, that working mothers are greedy and that people should not have children if the state has to look after them.

Whether you like it or not, those children that are so easily denigrated on here are the ones who will look after you when you are old and feeble and believe me it comes faster than you think. Unless you are a very rich person and never need to go into a state or private run old age facility you will get what you take. You can of course, if you are rich, hire nurses round the clock 24/7 at around $30 and hour and assume that they care about you. There too you can be neglected and abused because you did not have the time or whatever to have your own children.

The worst scourge we have now is Alzheimers, those people need protective care,and who will give it to them?

Do I approve of state run or private child care, it depends on the case but I do know that I would rather have stayed home with my children when their father died. I, of course, had not choice. I had to support myself and them.

Saturn · February 24, 2007

If I remember rightly, in Russia, it was the law that all children had to be put in daycare and their mothers had to work for the state.

That's false. Daycare was widely available at very low cost and many took advantage of it but there was no law forcing them to.

Nice thinking, magrace, but children may not be as dependable as you may think. I happen to know a lawyer whose mother stayed at home to raise her and her brother. The mother is in her 70s now and she asked her daughter for money because she wasn't able to make ends meet on her OAS/GIS (small amount of pension money from her husband who's passed and no pension of her own because she stayed home). The answer was "I already pay for your OAS through my taxes and that's enough." Now I don't know what kind of mother she was and how she raised her children but in this case she clearly did herself a bad trick. Women who sacrifice their own financial security to stay at home with their children are not necessarily doing themselves a favour (actually most of them end up below poverty when their spouses pass away).