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CHILD CARE IN BUDGET 2007

23 Mar 07

Just as expected, Monday’s budget announcement related to child care spending was a total disappointment.

It is clear that the conservative government does not have a plan for delivering the national child care program that Canadians want. This federal government is shrugging responsibility on child care and passing the buck to provinces, businesses, and parents.

The main points to gleam from child care in the 2007 budget are the following:

• The Harper government confirmed a cut of almost $1 billion to child care which means that your province is being asked to deliver on child care with almost 80% less funding than was previously committed by the federal government. Instead of the former $1.2 billion commitment, the Conservative government is planning to transfer a mere $250 million to provinces and territories for child care spending. To see how much will be cut in your province or territory, see the table on page 3 in CCAAC’s brief The Financial Reality behind the Federal Child Care Spaces Initiative: A Mismatch of Mythic Proportions .
• The Harper government all but abandoned its flawed plan to create spaces through tax incentives to businesses after you – the advocates - highlighted research, best practices, domestic and international experience that showed the initiative won’t work. While there is still a provision for this ineffective scheme in the budget, there is no money attached to it – an indication that even the government concedes it won’t work. For more information on why the spaces initiative is bad public policy, see the Code Blue for Child Care report Making space for child care: Getting good child care policy back on the agenda.
• The Conservative government is planning to spend $1.5 billion on a new child tax benefit. While some families may benefit from tax credits, the fact remains that most families still need child care and tax credits do not build a system. At the end of the day, eight out of ten children outside of Quebec do not have access to quality, affordable child care spaces. What is more frustrating is that this new money ($1.5 billion), along with the so-called universal child care allowance (an estimated 2.6 billion in 2007/2008) totals $4.1 billion – almost enough money to operate a universal child care system for all 3 to 5 year-olds with federal funds alone.

WHAT DOES THIS BUDGET MEAN?
The Conservative government’s refusal to take leadership on child care means more families on waitlists across the country, and more young children missing out on early learning opportunities in their communities. Unless the 2007 federal budget is amended to fully restore the child care funding commitment of $1.2 billion, families will continue to carry the impossible responsibility of balancing the needs of their families with increasingly challenging economic demands.

For the government’s summary document on the budget and child care, click here.

For more information on child care in the 2007 Budget, see:

• CCAAC’s 2007 Budget Media Release: Harper’s cut and run approach hurting families
• Code Blue for Child Care’s Media Release: Budget message on child care: let parents eat cake
• Code Blue for Child Care’s Budget Analysis: Federal Budget 2007: Watch out
• Code Blue for Child Care’s call on all federal opposition parties to speak out against the $1 billion cut in federal funding for child care: Opposition asked to act against $1 billion cut in child care funding

For further background information,

• See CCAAC’s submission to the federal government in response to their 2006 Economic and Fiscal Update which presents the government’s priorities including debt reduction and tax cuts but regrettably not child care services: Early Learning and Child Care Services for Canada: Building Advantage from the Foundation
• Also, see the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ recently released Strength in Numbers: Alternative Federal Budget 2007, or the summary document: Alternative Federal Budget 2007: Budget in Brief.
• See also the Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action (FAFIA) publication Women’s Equality and the Fiscal Imbalance, which describes how increased federal transfers to the provinces and territories represent a real opportunity for Canada to better comply with its human rights obligations to women, but only if governments agree to develop common standards and designate monies for programs and services on which women heavily rely.