Ignatieff says child care is Liberals’ top social priority
Norma Greenaway, Canwest News Service
Published: Monday, February 01, 2010
Blair Gable/Reuters
Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff visiting a pre-kindergarten class at an early childhood learning centre in Ottawa on Oct. 20, 2009.
OTTAWA -- A federal Liberal government will not let the ballooning deficit get in the way of implementing a national early learning and child care program, Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff vowed Monday.
"I am not going to allow the deficit discussion to shut down discussion in this country about social justice," Mr. Ignatieff told reporters on Parliament Hill. "We will find the money because it seems to me an excellent investment."
He described a national early learning system as a way to give young people an "equal start" in life and also the "best anti-poverty program" on offer.
Mr. Ignatieff said he is committed to making it the "No. 1 social priority" of a Liberal government, although he refused to discuss the price tag or where he would find the money to pay for it.
Mr. Ignatieff's comments followed pessimistic predictions by Ken Battle, one of Canada's top social policy researchers, that social policy gains will be one of the victims of the economic recession.
Describing himself as a "chastened realist," Mr. Battle told a Liberal-organized forum on poverty and homelessness that statistics show poverty has always increased during previous economic recessions, and that it remained stubbornly high even after the economy started to recover.
The forum heard calls from advocates for disabled, poor and homeless Canadians for investments in everything from social housing to job-creation, education and child care to easing the plight of an estimated 3.4 million people living in poverty.
Mr. Battle, president of the Caledon Institute, argued, however, that prospects are "very dim" the federal government -- regardless of its political stripe -- will have the resources within the next few years to invest in social policy areas.
Referring to the estimated deficit of $56-billion this year, he said: "This puts a cold shower on things. I think we have to be realistic."
Speaking later in an interview, Mr. Battle said one possible solution would be to increase the GST by two points -- back to its original 7%. That would raise about $12-billion a year that could be earmarked for anti-poverty measures.
But Mr. Battle said serious resistance to the idea of raising taxes makes such a step unlikely.
"We're swimming upstream," he said. "Poverty is going up, government is going to be restraining spending for the next while -- three or four years, so there is not going to be a lot of cash around to do the kinds of investments we need," Battle said.
Conservative Leader Stephen Harper made a two-point cut in the GST a centrepiece of his successful 2006 election campaign.
One of the new minority Tory government's acts was to announce it would not follow through on the Liberals $5-billion national child care plan.
It killed the program after the first year, and instead provides a taxable $100-a-month payment to parents for each child under the age of six.
The hearings on a range of policy issues this week and last have been organized to highlight the Liberals' willingness to be on the job in Ottawa and their opposition to Prime Minister Stephen Harper's decision to suspend Parliament until March
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an even bigger deficit during an economic recovery ? or recession depending on how you look at it , sounds like iggy is trying to be like obama who just announced a 3 trillion dollar us deficit or something like that . the liberals are once again demonstrating that they live in a dream land and have no idea how to move the country forward or get us out of deficit
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