Right now in Canada all expenses for enrolling one’s child in an official day-care are %100 tax deductible. If a parent decides, because their spouse is willing and able to work enough to support them, to stay at home to take care of their children, however, none of the costs associated are equivalently eligible for a tax deduction. If one is wealthy enough the cost could be easily accepted, but if one is relatively poor, the difference might very well be enough to force both parents to work and their children into day-care against their wishes. The government is thus discriminating against parents who choose to take care of their own children rather than putting them in institutionalized day-care — hardly a proper role for any government to be engaged in. The Liberal’s plan would only compound this problem through the inevitability of raising taxes to pay for yet another universal social program with its legion of bureaucrats, public-sector unions and lack of any real accountability to individual citizens.
Yet even if it were to "only" cost $5 billion and did not require any tax increases, the Liberal's proposal would still be wrong. It reveals clearly an attitude that is all too prevalent in Canada, but that few seem to worry about: that government always knows best. Though the Canadian health-care system is far from perfect I accept the necessity of government involvement as the price to pay for making health-care universally accessible; one thing I think should be a basic right of citizens in civilized countries, though people, unlike what has been the case until recently (and is still considered heresy by many on the Left), should be allowed to purchase health-care services privately if they have the desire and the means. As well, the profusion of bureaucracy that seems to necessarily accompany government social programs seems to be, in this case, in fact better than the evidenced alternative in the USA where a substantially higher percentage of their GDP is spent on health-care (though over 40 million people are not covered); mainly because of their even worse health-care bureaucracy caused by having so many different insurers for health-care providers to deal with (though the Canadian system could certainly learn a great deal from the USA in terms of introducing competitive mechanisms into its health-care system in order to motivate better service and efficiencies that are now discouraged by the government monopoly. See the findings of Senator Kirby’s Report on Health-Care for more details.)
The technology of health-care has become so complicated that massive bureaucracy, whether public or private, seems to be an inevitable and unavoidable consequence. In the case of child-care, however, no such government intrusion should be accepted. Despite the repeated insistence (that is usually uncritically repeated by the media) of self-interested child-care professionals’ unions, raising children has not become increasingly complicated on account of “the need to stay competitive” or any such associated drivel. Instead, this is a standard justification for the introduction of universal child-care plans, like the one the Liberal’s are proposing, that are in fact little but disguised power grabs by bureaucrats, unions and socialist intellectuals who would prefer everyone were the same. Human beings are incredibly adaptive and if raised with love, caring and the appropriate educational opportunities will develop the means and skills necessary to accomplish the greatest things. This is much more likely to happen in a non-institutionalized environment—either provided by the parents’ themselves or by someone directly responsible to them—than a government run, unionized system of child-care centres where individual differences are sacrificed to the interests of the Rousseauian General Will. Though I have no children as of yet, I have no desire to entrust the government with their care; intimations of Huxley’s Brave New World come far too easily to mind.
A couple of quotes pertaining to Reid’s “beer and popcorn” remarks also deserve to be read. First is an editorial from The National Post from December 13, 2005 (http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/editorialsletters/story.html?id=03bf9410-125a-407b-8acf-954095d417bf) excerpts below:
Some commentators have described Scott Reid's controversial comments on a weekend television panel as nothing more than a "gaffe." Far from it. The suggestion by Paul Martin's most senior spokesman that parents would use the child-care benefits being proposed by the Conservatives to buy "beer and popcorn" was more than a mere slip-up. In fact, it was a rare look through the Liberals' glasses -- a chance to see how they view Canadians, and why they favour such a paternalistic mode of government.
The two major parties' differing philosophies on child care have laid bare a larger philosophical divide. By providing parents with $1,200 per child per year to spend as they see fit, the Conservatives have shown they trust Canadian parents to make their own decisions about how to care for children and manage a family budget. But not the Liberals. Rather than leaving it up to parents to decide among daycare, nannies, stay-at-home parenting or care by relatives, Paul Martin insists only one option should be favoured: a top-down network of state-approved daycare centres. According to this view, bureaucrats know better than parents what is best for children. Just think, Mr. Reid, told viewers: If child-care money were under the control of parents themselves, they would simply "blow [it] on beer and popcorn."
…
Sadly, this condescending theory of government extends well beyond child care. On health care, the Liberals refuse to permit personal choice -- insisting that Canadians either sign on to their Soviet-style health monopoly or flee the country to get more timely care in the United States. Rather than trusting most Canadians to be self-sufficient, they continue to create a culture of dependency through regional subsidies. In a purported effort to protect us from ourselves, the Liberals established a $2-billion gun registry that served little purpose other than to harass and humiliate law-abiding firearms owners. And in general, they continue to tax us at a far higher level than is needed to provide the basic services expected of government -- because in their view, a dollar in the hands of government will be better spent than a dollar in the hands of the average Canadian.
Sorry for this being so damn long, but it’s been bugging me all week so I’ve given it a lot of thought. Any comments would of course be appreciated.
A next day update
And from www.proudtobecanadian.com/blog an edited version of columnist Andrew Coyne's take on the issue:
Liberal policy, disguised as a gaffe
[...] But it wasn’t a gaffe: It’s Liberal policy. This wasn’t some no-name MP wandering off-message. This was the Prime Minister’s chief spokesman. It wasn’t an inadvertent slip of the tongue, or an unguarded moment. It was a considered, deliberate soundbite, delivered on national television. And in case there were any doubt of its purpose, the comment was repeated, defended and elaborated upon later in the day by another of the Prime Minister’s sound-biters, John Duffy. The apologies came only after they had measured the media reaction.
Still, if the Reid Doctrine does not meet the precise definition of a gaffe—in Michael Kinsley’s classic formulation, when a politician tells the truth—it was revealing enough in its own way: if not as a mirror of objective reality, then as a window into the Liberal mind.
[...] On the other hand, it is true that Liberals think that. It may be a silly way of putting it, but it reflects a sincere belief that parents are not the best people to look after their children—that others, more expert, are.
Is that not the implicit, if not the explicit message of the Liberals’ own daycare policy? To hear the Grits talk, you’d think they were dividing up the loaves and fishes: for whereas the Tories would fob off parents with a measly “$25 a week” for each child under six, the Liberals would spend “billions” creating “spaces.” As always, they’re hoping nobody does the math: When you add up all those measly individual payments, the Tory plan would pump twice as much money into daycare each year as the Liberals’, money which, when presented to daycare providers, has a way of opening up “spaces.” It’s just that these spaces would not necessarily be where the government prefers, but rather where parents preferred.
And that’s the difference between the two plans. The implications are inescapable. The Liberals don’t trust parents to choose the right daycare provider, for the same reason they don’t trust them to decide whether to put their kids in daycare at all: because, fundamentally, they don’t trust parents. They don’t think they’re up to it. [...]
And if they don't trust parents to do what's best for their children, why would they trust any person to take care and be responsible for themselves at all? According to this logic the government should take away all of people's money - because individuals might after all misspend it - and with its enlightened wisdom build a "system" that would solve all of societies problems. This promise of a socialist utopia has been tried, of course, in dozens of countries and has not once succeeded; maybe, just maybe, because the premises are wrong...
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