(Note: This is pretending to be about politics, but is really about MY WIFE and MY DAUGHTER being in the newspaper. So, if you don’t care about the political stuff, keep reading until you get to that part!)
I know I go off a lot on American politics here, way more than I do about the homegrown kind, and there’s a simple reason for that–until the recent election most of the homegrown things were pretty minor, or even positive (think gay marriage, or us not going to the Iraq war). Even now, when Harper has started doing things that get my dander up, they don’t compare at all on the evil scale with what Bush, et. al., have been pulling off for six years (but give him time–he’s already adopted the “imperial” style and associated arrogance, which is even more impressive considering he’s running a minority.)
However, just because Bush is more wrong, that doesn’t mean Harper gets a free pass. One thing Harper has done that’s caused a lot of angry discussion around our household is to alter the plan for child care funding. For my Canadian readers, you already have heard about this to the point of nausea, so skip to the next paragraph after the quote. For my American readers, the capsule summary is nicely covered by this Toronto Star article:
One of the Conservatives’ top priorities is to deliver on an election promise to cancel the $5 billion national child-care system and begin handing out $1,200 a year to parents for every child under six, starting July 1.
Alternatively, you can read a summary that comes with a nice Seussian cartoon.
This is a typical conservative move: cut social spending, and shift what moeny does come out of the public coffers towards the people who need it least, all the while using simplistic slogans like “you know better than the government how to spend your money”. In fact, as the slogan suggests, it’s a tax cut disguised as a social program. Don’t believe me? Well, maybe the Caledon Insititute’s paper on the subject might be more convincing:
Researchers Ken Battle, Sherri Torjman and Michael Mendelson outline the fundamental problems with the Conservative proposal – one that will see modest income families receive as little as one-third of a promised-but-wholly-insufficient $1,200 per child per year.
The main beneficiaries will be affluent, single-earner, two-parent families.
In our household, we understand the mathematics and tax ramifications of Harper’s plan (which results in the effective benefit being largest for the people who need it least) and we are also pretty passionate about social programs having a goal of providing a high level of service to everyone, regardless of their means. (Don’t even get us started about two tier health care!)
In fact, Trish has been talking to everyone about this issue, trying to spread some knowledge that might penetrate the simplistic and deeply inaccurate “I get $100 a month! Yay!” meme, which resulted in her (and Sarah) being on the cover of today’s Halifax Daily News. The article itself is online:
Extra cash an illusion – mom
Taxes, fees likely to cancel out child-care money, says parent
By Rachel Boomer
The Daily News
HALIFAX – It didn’t take Trish McLaren long to realize the federal Conservatives’s promise to give families $100 a month wasn’t going to help her pay for day care.
McLaren spends $33 a day, or $8,580 a year, to send her 18-month-old daughter, Sarah, to Kids R Kids in Bayers Lake. She’s allowed to claim $7,000 of that annually against her taxes.
With the increased taxes the allowance will bring, and with many day cares saying they’ll raise their rates if the federal government does not step in with subsidies, McLaren figures the allowance won’t leave most families any better off.
…
Not only is the story on the cover (although not the “main” cover image), but the actual article has a really big (for a newspaper) photo of Sarah and Trish–the one in the online article is a small cropped section of the larger one.
I bet after the ladies who work at the day care read this article, especially this bit:
“The women who work at the day care don’t get paid nearly enough, and they’re wonderful. I have nothing but praise for them,” McLaren said yesterday.
we’ll be the Favourite Parents!
Of course, because the Daily News a tabloid paper, it is written in a style targeted at people with a relatively low reading level; I’d be surprised if it were Grade 5 level. Consequently the article does manage to fail to convey many of Trish’s points at all, and isn’t terrible clear about any of them. Taking Trish’s arguments and writing them in three or four paragraphs of highly simplified language loses most of their power and nuance; it’s like trying to put Chomsky in a soundbite. At least the main point about day care already costing more than the limit that you can claim against taxes–meaning that all of the additional $1200 will be taxable in the top bracket for families that actually use day care–is there.
(I feel obliged to also point out that the Daily News clearly has dramatically inferior pagination to the city’s other daily paper, which is a virtual hymn to the glories of pagination technology.)
