The Omnifarium - Politics/BeerAndPopcorn.html

Beer And Popcorn

Category: Politics
Tue, 13 Dec 2005, 09:13

Conservative leader Stephen Harper made a campaign promise to give families with children under six $1200 a year to help pay for daycare. Since my family would be eligible, I feel compelled to comment. We're a more or less average middle class family living in a middle class neighborhood in suburban Toronto, and we have one child.

First, if we received this money, would it go towards daycare? Actually, no. Our child is being taken care of by a stay-at-home mom. We would have to find something else to spend the money on.

Okay, how about putting the $1200 into our child's RESP? No, we're already budgetting to max out our RESP contributions. Our child's future educational needs are important, and we'll find the money for that regardless.

Hmmm, now what would we spend that $1200 a year on? I know - we could spend it on beer and popcorn!

Seriously though, this demonstrates the problem with the Conservatives approach to spending our tax dollars - there is no guarantee that the money would actually be spent on daycare. True, many families would spend it responsibly. But for many others, they either have no need for the money, or they can't spend it on daycare anyways since affordable spaces are not available.

In a progressive society, the best way to spend our limited tax revenues is to direct the dollars to where the need is the greatest. In the case of early child care, the need is greatest among the working poor. While some middle class families may well put the $1200 towards daycare, the working poor have fewer alternatives. For most of them, the only reasonably affordable alternative is subsidized daycare. The problem is that there is too little of that, and the Conservatives are also planning on slashing funding that would create more subsidized daycare space.

The fact is that the $1200 is nothing more than a blatant tax cut disguised as a daycare benefit. Doing nothing to increase the number of affordable daycare spaces, it would benefit Canada's middle class at the expense of the working poor.

In general, Stephen Harper's promises seem directed at one very specific goal - to curry the support of middle class suburban neighborhoods, especially in the so-called "905 Region" in the greater Toronto area, in his not too subtle quest for national power.

In any election, voters have to base their vote on either of too choices: Do I vote for the party that will benefit me more? Or do I vote for the party that will benefit my country and community more? I'm still largely an undecided voter, but I think the Liberals are right in that the choice is about the kind of Canada we want to live in. Do we want to live in a country where the divide between the wealthy and the poor steadily increases? Where the working poor have fewer and fewer opportunities to advance and improve their lot in life? Or do we want to live in a progressive and caring society?

Hans

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