NDP promises child care on Quebec model
Last Updated: Monday, December 12, 2005 | 1:29 PM ET
CBC News
Layton suggested that a national system based on the Quebec model be created. The party would spend $1.8 billion in the first year of the system and increase that amount by $250 million a year over the next three years.
The NDP calculates that would be enough money to create 200,000 child-care spaces in the first year, and 25,000 more each year following.
NDP Leader Jack Layton sings along with Ronit Patel during a visit to Parkdale Beach Child Care Centre, Toronto, Monday, Dec. 12. (CP Photo/Chuck Stoody)
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"Mr. Harper's plan is simply a tax cut of $4 a day that won't buy much child care and won't build a single child-care space," Layton said. "And as wrong as Mr. Harper's plan is, it's also wrong for Liberals to attack parents, to suggest that somehow parents would take the money for beer and popcorn."
He said the Liberals have been promising child care for 12 years, and have yet to deliver.
"This latest promise is certainly no commitment to child care," he said. It's "writing a cheque, no strings attached and giving it to the provinces."
Layton said he would introduce a child-care act that would spell out that federal funding would be spent only on "licensed, high-quality, non-profit child care."
He would reopen the federal-provincial agreements after one year to implement his vision.
Conservative Leader Stephen Harper said he would honour those agreements for a year, but then would stop the transfer payments in favour of his own child-care strategy.
