Freeland says Corona pandemic provides an opportunity for ‘national child care’

Toronto, April 9: Yesterday, Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said in a conversation with former Minister Ken Dryden that the current government’s corona recovery plan has provided an opportunity to fulfill a long-standing commitment to ‘child care’. Even though, successive Liberal leaders have vowed to overhaul the country’s child care regime only to retreat when in government. So now the Corona pandemic has given that opportunity. That’s why she said, “I really believe COVID has created a window of political opportunity and maybe an epiphany on the importance of early learning and child care.”

It has been observed that most of the women-dependent jobs i.e. hospitality, retail and food industry have lost thousands of jobs in the last one year due to the Corona pandemic. According to a survey, about 100,000 working women have left their jobs since the Corona pandemic started. Apparently, they are no longer looking for work. So, Freeland said, “A lot of people who didn’t have to worry about early learning and child care, now COVID-19 has brought it into their lives and I think that creates a real opportunity for us. Now is the moment that Canada needs to get this done, we need to build this for the women of today.”

Freeland said, who will table a federal budget later this month, a low-cost child-care system like the one already in place in Quebec, where parents pay a flat-rate of $10 a day per child, will create good-paying jobs and drive economic growth by allowing more women to work after giving birth. And Prime Minister Justin Trudeau thinks Canada will be better revived after Covid-19. That’s why he called a three-day virtual policy-making meeting of the Liberal Party of Canada to come up with new ideas before the next election. In it, party delegates will debate over basic income, high-speed rail and a “just transition” for energy workers affected by the shift to cleaner fuel sources, among other proposals.

In fact, Dryden served as Minister of Social Development in 2004-06 under Prime Minister Paul Martin, led an effort in 2004-06 to build a national child-care system like the one that is now being contemplated by Trudeau and his cabinet. In that case, Dryden outlined a low-cost, universal childcare system for working parents for $5 billion over a five-year period. But since the Liberals were ousted in 2008, it didn’t see the light of day. The Conservative government later began sending monthly checks to parents in child care in an alternative way.

So, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland now wants to take a similar initiative in a short span for the working women during the Corona pandemic to fulfill that desire. That’s why Dryden said such a system — which, given constitutional considerations, will require buy-in from the provinces — will take years to build and will go through many iterations before a fully functioning national network would be in place. Despite the hurdles, he said starting that work now is necessary to give Canadian children “a great, great start in life.”