Federal Child Care Initiatives
Today a demonstration was held at the office of Colin Mayes, Member of Parliament for the Okanagan-Shuswap regarding Child Care.
Here is what the Federal Government is doing to support families with child care needs:
- Universal Child Care Benefit (UCCB) – $1,200 per year is paid directly to parents for each child under the age of six years. (This is in addition to the existing measures such as the, Child Tax Benefit, National Child Benefit Supplement and the Child Care Expense deduction.)
- The goal is to provide parents the freedom to choose the child care option most suitable to their family needs.
- Total investment by the Federal Government since July, 2006 = $1.4 billion.
$250 million per year has been set aside beginning in 2007/2008 to support the creation of new child care spaces. - The goal is to create 25,000 new spaces per year for the next five years.
- The federal government struck a committee in 2006 to work with stakeholders to develop a program that promotes flexible and responsive child care spaces tailored to the needs of the community.
- Colin Mayes has put forward names of local contacts with expertise in daycare creation and operation to provide input to this committee.
The Federal Government is very concerned about the welfare of children and families. The Federal Government has made and will continue to make tax cuts (currently projected at 20 billion dollars) that will put money back into the pockets of every Canadian.
The Federal Government is reviewing the recent “Code Blue for Child Care Campaign” Report Card which reviews government performance on the early learning and child care fronts. They will consider the proposals made within this report to improve performance in the next year.
Contact Information:Terri A. JonesExecutive Assistant to Colin Mayes, MPTelephone: (250) 260-5020Email: mayesc1a@parl.gc.ca
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PM gets failing grade for his government's child-care plan Canada.com
OTTAWA — Child-care activists say the Conservative government’s change of heart on climate change has bolstered hopes it might rethink its child-care policy. "It’s encouraging they have seen the error of their ways in other areas, such as the environment," said Monica Lysack, executive director of the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada. "We are hoping they will see the error of their ways in child care, and therefore invest in a system to create and maintain child-care spaces."Lysack was among a group of child-care advocates who gathered Monday at an Ottawa child-care centre to slam the Conservative government's failure so far to provide details of its promise to spend $250 million a year over the next five years, beginning April 1, to create 125,000 child-care spaces.
The plan calls for providing up to $10,000 in federal tax credits to businesses or community groups for each space they create.Critics say the proposal is deeply flawed because, among other things, it provides no operating funds. Also, businesses have shown virtually no interest in the proposal.The Code Blue for Child Care campaign — which brings together child-care organizations and other groups — unveiled a report card at the event that gave the prime minister failing grades for his government's child-care plan, the centerpiece of which is a taxable monthly allowance of $100 for each child under the age of six."Stephen Harper has some trouble understanding basic concepts. His major term project, the universal child-care plan, is not child care," said Rachel Besharah, an early childhood educator in Ottawa.
Provincial and territorial governments also want details of the Conservative plan, given Harper's announcement a year ago today that he was canceling the former Liberal government's child-care funding deals, effective this March 31.Killing the deals has left the provinces and territories with almost $4 billion less than they had banked on over the next three years.
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