NDP thinks big with national daycare plan [View all]

NDP thinks big with national daycare plan

by Jeffrey Simpson at the Globe and Mail

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/headline/article21094039/

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Good for Thomas Mulcair and the New Democratic Party. Finally, they have put a Big Idea in front of Canadians.

The Big Idea is federally financed daycare. Make no mistake, it’s a big-government idea, and as such will be attacked from many quarters. But parents of young children – indeed all Canadians – should ask themselves: Is our current child-care situation working?

In far too many places, parents either can’t find child care or can’t afford it. Costs per child can easily run past $1,000 a month, a burden that hurts people trying to balance work and child rearing. Women (who still do most of the heavy lifting with young children) who work produce tax revenue. Proper, affordable daycare allows more of them to work, which means more revenue for the government.

In other words, what’s spent on government-sponsored child care should be offset by revenue gained by individuals and governments. This tradeoff, argued for strongly by Quebec economist Pierre Fortin, was brilliantly explained last year in a Globe and Mail series on child care spearheaded by writer Erin Anderssen.




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