The Liberals Take Step Towards A National Child-Care System In The 2021 Budget
The federal government is proposing millions of dollars in new spending as a down payment on a planned national child-care system that according to the Liberals shall be outlined in next spring’s budget.
To start, the Liberals have proposed in their fiscal update to spend $420 million in grants and bursaries to help the provinces and the territories train and retain qualified early childhood educators.
Moreover, the Liberals are also proposing to spend $20 million over five years to build a child-care secretariat to guide the federal policy work and an additional $15 million in the ongoing spending for a similar Indigenous-focused body.
The money has been designed to lay the foundation for what is likely to become a big-money promise in the coming budget.
The current federal spending on child care will be expired near the end of the decade but the Liberals are now proposing to keep the money flowing, starting with $870 million a year in 2028.
Previously the Canadian Press had reported that the government is now considering annual spending beyond that figure as it contemplates how to work with the provinces to add more child-care spaces while also ensuring good learning environments and affordability for the parents.
In the text of her speech on the fiscal update that has been released in advance to the journalists, Freeland stated that being a working mother and as a minister of finance Canada will not be truly competitive until all the Canadian women have access to the affordable child-care that they thereby need to support their participation in the country’s workforce.
Calling it as an element of a feminist agenda, Freeland also stated that pending the money sound business sense and also has the backing of several corporate leaders.
According to Scotiabank estimate, conducted earlier this year, creating nationally that Quebec has provincially, would cost approximately $11.5 billion a year.
As per an estimated report on the prospects for national daycare last week from the Centre for Future Work, the government could rake something between $18 billion and $30 billion per year in new revenues as more parents are now going into the workforce.
Going further, Freeland has also made a note in recent days about the need to do something on the child-care given how many women reportedly fell out of the workforce when the COVID-19 forced the closures of schools and daycares in the spring.
Many have not gone back to work.
December 7 marks the 50th anniversary of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women, which at the time called for the Governments to immediately get started on a national daycare system
Moreover, as Freeland noted that during a virtual fundraiser last week, many women were toddlers then and are mothers now and the country hasn’t moved far enough on child-care.
I am Darryl Broadhurst and i give investors an insight into the most recent news hitting the “Technology” sector in Wall Street. I have been an independent financial adviser for over 11 years in the city and in recent years turned my experience in finance and passion for journalism into a full time role. I perform analysis of Companies and publicizes valuable information for shareholder community.
