The Harper Government and Universal Childcare Benefits
(summarized from The Harper Record, CCPA, 2008)
- The Harper government’s first act was to cancel the childcare agreements that had been negotiated with the provinces. Instead of respecting the process by which a Canada-wide child care program had been established, he abandoned all consultation and coherent policy-making for a taxable monthly allowance and transfers to private businesses and groups for child care infrastructure.
- The scheme’s true value would be less than $1,200 per child per year (already a tiny fraction of the cost of putting a child in full-time daycare which is estimated at a minimum of triple that cost and in most cases up to 5-6 times that amount) because it would increase families’ taxable allowance income and thus trigger both reductions in federal and province/territorial income-tested benefits and increases in taxes.