Way too much party line

Apr 18 2007 Salmon Arm Observer Editorial

Okanagan Shuswap MP Colin Mayes may have his heart in the right place, but his inability to allow reality to infiltrate his spouting of the party line leaves much to be desired. Mayes held a town hall meeting in Salmon Arm last week, where he reviewed his party’s accomplishments. While a survey included in Mayes’ parliamentary report mentions that 31 per cent of respondents said an MP should be an advocate and 30 per cent said he should be a listener, he is doing neither on several issues.

One of the most astounding examples of his ignoring of both reality and his constituents is his undying support of his party’s policies on child care. Despite the fact he has met with child-care providers and others who have explained to him that his government’s $100 per month for parents of children under six neither allows a parent to stay home nor makes it feasible to access reliable day care, he continues to tout it as a solution for parents. The facts today are that in order to be able to afford groceries and a roof over their heads, both parents of most two-parent families must work. While Mayes might look with nostalgia at the good old days of the 1950s, when a father would work and a mother would stay home with the kids, those days are no longer economically feasible for most people. Only those parents with very high incomes, or those parents whose parents have very high incomes, can afford the luxury of staying home. It’s also highly unlikely, as he says, that people will forget how to parent if affordable child-care centres proliferate. Right now, there’s a shortage of child care, with parents forced to book spaces while their children are still in utero. Parents aren’t looking for child care because they want to escape parenting duties, they’re looking for child care because they have to work to survive economically.

Knowing that a child has been well-cared for in a professional, caring setting is much more likely to provide a good parenting style than a parent going to work while worrying if the nine-year-old left in charge of his five-year-old sibling is coping all right. Or wondering if the neighbour the children have been shunted off to is really reliable. Mayes made other statements that deny reality. He said nuclear power is clean power. Tell that to the folks in Chernobyl or Three Mile Island. As most people are aware, nuclear waste is the gift that keeps on giving. Mayes said the more homeless shelters you build, the more homeless people there will be. Right. It would be refreshing to hear more about reality and less party line reflected in the speeches from Mr. Mayes and the rest of Mr. Harper’s foot soldiers. Otherwise the electorate is just going to adopt one of their traits – and quit listening.