Daycare wasn't just a `promise,' Martin says
February 4, 2010
Susan Delacourt
OTTAWA BUREAU
OTTAWA–Former prime minister Paul Martin is reminding Canadians that the country did have a national child-care program up and running, but it was dismantled by Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservatives.
A national child-care system was unveiled this week as the centrepiece of Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff's future election platform – no matter how bare the fiscal cupboard – and was immediately dismissed as too costly and unrealistic by the ruling Conservatives.
But Martin, who rarely wades into the daily political fray, told the Star on Wednesday that national child care is no Liberal pipe dream of the past or future.
"The Conservatives cancelled an existing, operating child-care plan that had been signed by all 10 provinces and was underway," he said.
"It was no mere promise. It was delivered within two years," Martin added, a reference to the time lapsed from when he took over the prime minister's job in late 2003 to when he lost power in early 2006.
Though some pundits and commentators may have forgotten that a child-care program even existed, the former prime minister said, many citizens have not.
"On the child-care thing, I get people coming up to me on the streets, and they know about it," Martin said.
Martin said he's happy that Ignatieff is choosing to take up the torch for the cause again, in the face of deliberate efforts by Conservatives to erase the Liberal legacy.
A spokesman for Human Resources Minister Diane Finley said: "It is unfortunate that the Liberals are continuing to advocate for a costly one-size-fits-all daycare system that will cost Canadian families billions when they can least afford it."
Former Liberal social development minister Ken Dryden said he, too, is frustrated by the way Tories have tried to erase the memory of the national child-care system he had a large part in building.
It was on the eve of that election campaign, in late November 2005, that Dryden signed the last of the provincial agreements, with New Brunswick, setting in place a cross-Canada child-care system that would cost $5 billion over five years.
Dryden remembered it was difficult to convince people at the time that child care was more than a Liberal promise – the party had been promising a program dating back to the 1980s – but as the agreements took shape, doubts started to dispel.
So confident were people in the program, Dryden said, that they kept telling him they were convinced that the new program would be carried on, no matter who won the 2005-06 election. However, as soon as the Conservatives came to power in 2006, they served notice the provincial deals would lapse, to be replaced with a $100-a-month direct payment to parents for each child.
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Toronto Star