Luck of the national daycare in the hands of Canadian voters

OTTAWA, Sept. 2 (Reuters) – Canadians will face a clear decision on how to deal with a childcare crisis when they go to the polls on September 20, with Liberal rulers promising to move forward with a subsidized childcare system and rival conservatives offering tax credits to parents.

The coronavirus pandemic exposed the need for reliable and affordable child care, as daycare and school closures forced many parents, mostly women, to reduce working hours or leave jobs. to take care of children, impairing productivity.

More than 48% of Canadian parents have had difficulty finding affordable childcare services, according to a recent study by Statistics Canada, which caused 27% of them to delay returning to work and 41% to change schedules. labor.

Public support for a national daycare program is high, with more than 70% of Canadians in favor, according to a survey by Angus Reid. Support is stronger among women and left-wing Canadians, key voting blocs for center-left liberals who are in a neck-and-neck race with the Conservatives.

“What served to make the pandemic happen was that really the challenges of trying to balance child care with paid work were so obvious,” said Morna Ballantyne, executive director of Child Care Now, which advocates for daycare with funding. public. “Women were leaving the paid workforce.”

Mothers of young children experienced a huge jump in unemployment during the pandemic and continue to lag behind their male counterparts in recovering from these losses. The participation rates of women with children are also much lower than those of male parents. Making these women work is key to Canada’s economic growth, economists say.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals say his $ 30 billion ($ 23.8 billion) plan will drastically reduce nursery school fees by ensuring an average cost of C $ 10 a day and creating 250,000 new daycare places for five years. The Liberal plan is being implemented in seven of the ten provinces and one of the three Canadian territories.

The Conservatives, out of power since they lost the 2015 election, have said that if they win this month’s vote, they will cancel these agreements and instead offer payments of up to $ 6,000 C to the ‘year, depending on income, to help parents pay for the nursery of choice.

The divergent approaches of the two main parties could make daycare a key factor in key election protests, especially in Vancouver and Toronto, where center-based daycare sites are remarkably hard to find and daycare can cost thousands of dollars in families every month.

Kerry Liu, a Toronto area father whose youngest son will start kindergarten this year, said daycare was a huge expense for his family and the Liberals’ plan is definitely a key consideration. for him in the election.

“For two kids it’s almost $ 3,000 C (a month). So I think C $ 10 a day will benefit a lot of parents,” he said. “This is going to be a big game changer.”

The average cost of caring for a child in Toronto is C $ 1,578 per month. According to Reuters calculations, this decreases to 210 C $ per month according to the liberal plan compared to 1,178 C $ per month for a middle-income family according to the conservative plan.

“We will help all parents, all parents immediately,” whether they use public daycares or not, Conservative leader Erin O’Toole said when she launched her election platform last month.

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Business groups, who are typically concerned about excessive public spending, prefer the tax credit approach because subsidized care is more expensive.

But Trudeau’s national daycare strategy is “popular in all walks of life” among voters, said Nik Nanos, head of Nanos Research, and could be a task problem in narrow careers, especially in urban centers where both parents they usually work.

“If you’re in downtown Toronto or downtown Vancouver, you want to oppose the Conservatives for vaccinating and caring for children,” Nanos said, referring to the divergence of the two main parties over mandatory vaccines against COVID-19 .

Trudeau, who hopes high vaccination rates against COVID-19 and a strong economic rebound will help him win a majority government on Sept. 20, has ordered the shootings for federal workers and all their candidates. O’Toole opposes the warrants.

But last month’s chaotic situation in Afghanistan, where Canada fought to evacuate its citizens, has left Trudeau’s Liberals down at the polls and well below the 170 seats needed for a majority in the House of Commons. The Canadian economy also performed worse than expected in the second quarter.

According to a new Nanos Research poll, liberals, who currently rely on the support of opposition parties to pass legislation, are favored by 31% of voters compared to 34% by conservatives. Left-wing New Democrats, who also support the national daycare, are at 20%.

Many daycare advocates respond to the liberal plan. They say Canada needs more nursery school places, lower rates for parents and more job security for daycare workers.

“A tax credit for parents … won’t solve any of those problems,” said Kerry McCuaig, a member of early childhood policy at the University of Toronto’s Atkinson Center.

(1 $ = 1,2598 Canadian dollars)

Report by Julie Gordon in Ottawa; Additional reports by Steve Scherer; Edited by Paul Simao

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