The word "choice" is surely the most overused word in the government thesaurus.
A couple of years ago, the federal Conservative party promised Canadian parents "choice" in the form of $1,200 that could be used to help them care for their children.
This money, offered as an alternative to the former Liberal government's stillborn national child-care plan, was supposed to give parents the flexibility to either stay at home or pay to send their children to day care. In reality, this $100 monthly stipend (which the federal government not-so-conveniently claws back as taxable income) offers parents very little choice. Still, it made for nice rhetoric as it revealed the Conservatives' preference for giving Canadians a bit of their money back and wishing them the best of luck.
It does, however, help that the Conservatives have increased transfer payments to provinces so they can be flexible in the programs they can offer. The NDP government, which will reap about $1 billion of extra cash in the first three years of the new formula, this week started to spend some of that money, unveiling the "Family Choices" program, an ambitious plan to expand child care by creating 6,500 new spaces for kids within the next five years. The difference between the "choice" announced at a St. Vital day-care centre this week and the "choice" offered by the federal government two years ago is that the new choice for Manitoba parents is real, while the one offered by Ottawa is not. A choice that gives parents the opportunity to pay down their mortgage and put food on the table while knowing their kids are cared for is far better than the amount of choice $100 a month could possibly ever buy.
The Family Choices program begins modestly with $7.75 million to open up spots for 1,500 Manitoba kids in day cares and place another 100 in nursery schools. Within five years, however, the intent is to create 6,500 new child-care spaces and allow 1,300 more children a chance to attend nursery school.
More importantly, the program will ease the burden for parents by making it easier for them to put their kids in a day care of their choice. An online waiting list showing parents where there are openings for their children is just one way that the program is accommodating.
Another way the program has built-in flexibility is its emphasis on converting empty classrooms in underused schools into day-care space. The province plans to offer school divisions $22.5 million to create school-based day cares.
This should allow school divisions to keep open schools that are in danger of closing due to declining enrolment. For parents, it allows their children to become familiar with their school environment before they start kindergarten. Most importantly for taxpayers, it should save them money by making better use of a space that is presently being underused by the education system.
This is already happening in some rural divisions, where schools facing the threat of closure have turned empty classrooms into day cares. One of the criticisms of the former federal child-care program was that it wasn't practical or accessible for rural communities -- even though according to a 2006 Statistics Canada study, kids in rural areas are just as likely to receive child care as their urban-dwelling counterparts.
The Family Choices program promises to offer the same degree of choice to rural parents as it does to those living in Manitoba's cities, offering flexibility for day-care arrangements in smaller communities and in those really tiny places where day care just isn't an option.
Critics of child care will argue that any expansion of government-financed day care is no choice at all. To them, this is the nanny state in its most-literal sense, an oppressive plot to suck millions of dollars out of taxpayers' pockets and jam kids into day-care centres like so much cordwood.
But to view the new child-care program this way is to ignore the fact that for parents of young children, day care is a necessity rather than a state-financed luxury. Too many parents today don't have a choice -- both parents must work in order to feed themselves and their children, and this means someone has to care for the kids while mom and dad (or so often, just mom or just dad) are off providing for the family.
Like it or not, child care isn't really a question of the choices parents make -- it's an economic imperative. There aren't very many parents today who can afford to stay home when it costs $1.25 a litre to fill up and the average price on a suburban Winnipeg bungalow -- according to real estate firm Royal LePage -- has soared from about $140,000 in 2003 to $230,000 today.
Tack onto that nearly 10,000 job vacancies, and you can see that Family Services and Housing Minister Gord Mackintosh's claim that child care "is the fuel for our economic engine" isn't just another empty puff of political rhetoric.
It's true -- just as true as it is to claim that parents are finally getting a real choice in child care.
ctbrown7@yahoo.ca
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