Liberals’ $500-million daycare program praised

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This article was published 01/04/2011 (5560 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A $500-million Liberal child-care plan could help defray the cost of 3,000 new daycare spaces promised by the provincial NDP, says one local child-care advocate.

Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff toured the daycare and preschool centre in the Lord Roberts community centre Thursday morning and announced a $500-million fund to boost the number of daycare spaces, build more centres and train staff. Ignatieff said the program will help parents coping with years-long waits for daycare and help Canadians, especially single mothers or those on social assistance, get back into the workforce.

He said the fund would increase to $1 billion annually in four years and federal cash would be contingent on matching funds from provincial governments.

Ignatieff was short on numbers — how much Manitoba might receive, how many new spaces might be created, whether funding would be based on population or each province’s proposals.

But he said the fund would reduce wait lists without creating a large, national bureaucracy. The first funding deals could be done by summer, if the Liberals form the government.

"We want to get this done as quickly as possible," said Ignatieff. "You don’t need a big, vast federal program employing lots of bureaucrats. What you need is a fast, rapid-response, flexible model that responds to the needs of provinces."

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Pat Wege, executive director of the Manitoba Child Care Association, said the fund is "music to our ears" and hoped child care would appear on the platforms of other parties as the campaign unfolds.

She said Manitoba could be the first to get cash under such a program because the province is halfway into a well-established plan to create 6,500 new daycare spaces.

The province still has another 3,000 spaces to go before its self-imposed deadline of 2013. Those spaces could be eligible for federal matching funds, and Wege said even more could be created.

Wege said most daycare centres have wait lists that are "through the roof." A new centralized, online wait list is about to be launched that will reveal just how many parents are without daycare.

Winnipeg Free Press | Newsletter

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She said another 3,000 spaces will make a dent in that list, but she doesn’t believe it will be enough.

The Liberal fund is a step back from former Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin’s $5-billion national child-care plan, one he reached with provinces just before his defeat in the 2006 election. But Ignatieff said his proposal could be in place faster than waiting for every province to sign on to a national childcare program. And he said it allows each province to tailor their programs themselves.

Wege said a national program with uniform standards would help erase the patchwork of programs available in each province.

"Whether this is doable in the 21st century, I’m not so sure anymore," she added.

maryagnes.welch@freepress.mb.ca