Daycare

It's such a blessing to be living in a country where the most important issue of the day - the one that has been manufactured to have SO MUCH critical importance to our lives - is state-sponsored daycare.

Not nuclear proliferation...

Not Israel-Palestine...

Not trade wars with the US...

But DAYCARE!

Mad Cows? Oil? Bah! Trivial stuff. The real fight is over who gets to care for your one or two-year old. (Don't fool yourself - Many have no problems with the preschoolers -3-5yrs- going to a good quality daycare/preschool. Most of the talk bandied about by "experts" refer to the "socialization" of one and two year olds, or the economic prison imposed upon women "forced" to stay home and care for the offspring they hatched. Last time I checked, parenthood was something people engaged in voluntarily. You don't want the responsibility - don't have children...The proposed programs of national daycare seems to be about indoctrinating our young and "saving" them from the clutches of all parents whom the previous government deemed incompetent to raise their own children.)

Full disclosure time: My wife has just returned to work and my daughters, aged almost three and four and a half entered a private-company daycare two weeks ago...So for us this is a top-of-mind issue, as the double-income wouldn't flow until we found spots for the little ones. Time on the waiting list: one month. So there were spaces available. Cost to have them in full time: $530/month/child or $1060/month.

I also have to disclose that my parents ran a private "Family Day Care" out of our own home from the time I was twelve to the time my mother fell ill and died from cancer almost ten years later. "Family Day Care" was a form of business that I believe is still allowed in which a private person can care for a preset number of children in their own home as a business subject to regulation (in the case of my parents' business it was the local Family Day Care Society, whose minions would drop by for a chat/inspection every month or two) so I've seen it from both sides. It is a form that seems to have fallen out of favour because of the regulations involved in keeping a normal house safe for lots of kids with varying degrees of discipline and stupidity (yes, my biased observation - you weren't there... some kids are just DUMB!) It's a job trying to childproof a home for your own kid - try seven or eight of the snot-nosed little hell-spawn (yeah, they got into my room and found stuff they shouldn't have and that I had to explain to Mom and Dad...)

But I digress.

This issue has been kicking around for 36 years (see CBC News INDEPTH: Day care in Canada). Every government promises it in an election - every government has broken its promise after they've gotten elected and people have moved on. I didn't see Conservatives fighting the 2004 election on daycare. I didn't see any Liberals wagging their fingers at their candidates shouting "You didn't deliver on daycare! You betrayed us!" when election after election came and went.

It's after the election. Why are politicians still talking about this? With the thought of going to the polls at any time now (potentially) the issue hasn't been allowed to die its normal post-election death with phoenix-like resurrection 5 years later - just prior to the NEXT election, when the same group of engaged parents from the previous election are no longer concerned: their kids are in school now so why should they give a damn about somebody else's children? - But with this minority government situation part 2, maybe a sitting government might actually have to do something, as opposed to the nothing of every previous government.

As a ruthlessly self-interested parent - sometimes you have to be - as a good first step I'd like to have something right now rather than this nebulous "perfect system" that's been talked about for 36 years and never delivered upon. The journey of a thousand steps starts with just one.

I'll take my $1,200 x 2 kids please. That's a 19% reduction in my costs versus a whole lotta nothing up to this point. Like I said: it's a start.

And I promise not to spend it on beer and popcorn.