How is $1200 "choice"?

Roaming through a few of the more blatantly "pro-CPC" blogs this morning, I find that the "talking point du jour" is how the Conservative Party's "$100/month {taxable} Childcare benefit" is all about creating choice for people, and yet evil "liberal" types use the term choice all the time when talking about abortion laws.

First, I would be the last person to draw any kind of equivalency between abortion and child care. Any attempt to do so is disingenuous jingoism at its worst.

Second, $100/month, when taxed, leaves an "average" family (income ~ $35K/year - which is starvation wages low where I live) with about $70 - far less than that if your income is pushing $60-70 and up.

Think about it - you are a single parent struggling by on a $35K salary in a city like Calgary, Vancouver or Toronto and someone hands you an extra $70 a month. Lovely - it's not like you'll turn down the money, but in terms of child care it makes precious little difference. Heck - the cost of diapers in a month is going to be that much or more for young children! Day care in major urban centers is running anywhere from $600 to well over $1000/month. (Hmmm let's see - $75 might buy - a whole two days of cheaper daycare...)

So - how, pray tell, is this pittance creating choice? A family struggling with the costs of raising children is still struggling. Has this created one new daycare space for a family which needs two incomes just to survive? No - of course not.

For a family who chooses to have the mother stay at home, $1200 is a slap in the face - assuming a 2000 hour work year (and we all know that being a parent is not an 8 hour a day job!), it's about $0.60/hour. In Alberta, the minimum wage is pushing $8.00/hr - to flip hamburgers at McDonald's!

Families where both parents work - out of necessity or choice - two days of cheap (and cheap is rare) day care is a bad joke. It's an even worse joke if both parents are pulling down professional incomes - because it's taxable income and pretty much gets clawed back.

If the CPC was serious about creating choice for families, they would have to approach the issue from several different angles:

1) Address the issues faced by families with regards to taxation in a way that reduces the tax burden carried. For example, allow income splitting between spouses to reduce the tax burden for a couple where one parent has chosen to stay at home to raise children. Other policy options would include a sizable direct deduction for child care costs which would come directly off the gross income.

2) Address the ongoing problems faced by low income earners trying to raise children (and who must work just to keep body and soul together). This means creating affordable child care spaces across the nation. Whether that is through a subsidy program or whatever doesn't matter - it has to be direct and concrete. {No, programs to "encourage" industry to create such spaces don't count - they don't work, and they always get subverted by corporate greed.}

3) Focus the taxpayer dollars spent on child care in areas where they do the most to ensure that people have practical choices. Right now, the only people that have real choices are the wealthy. If you can afford to live on one income, that's lovely - go for it. If you have two professional incomes in the family, that's fine too - the cost of "better quality" childcare may be irritating, but you can find a way to afford it. Lower income families don't have these choices - they are often struggling just to keep food on the table and a roof overhead. They must work just to pay the bills. Where are their options?

Choice - real choice - is about enabling people to be productive, valued members of society. Stephen Harper's program doesn't do that. In fact, one could look at Stephen Harper's program as doing little more than punishing women for having sex. After, all, it is often the woman who winds up with the 'stay-at-home' duties, especially in the child's early years. I think it really says something about how the the CPC values "traditional roles" (apparently at about 7% of working at McD's).

The message to women - don't have sex - you can't afford the consequences. If you do, not only are we going to punish you for that, we're going to value your efforts as a parent at a fraction of what you'd make working at McDonald's. God help you if you're single, and there's no man to help pay the bills - cause the CPC sure as heck won't.

Yes...the CPC, they're really all about choice, aren't they?