Thread by @ArmineYalnizyan

@AbigailBimman Up to $6K for *families* with incomes under $30K
Also you can work while on maternity leave without getting whacked up to $1K a month, $250 a week! Yay?
More paragraphs on how you'll get time off if your child dies or you suffer a stillbirth/miscarriage than info on childcare.

@AbigailBimman Note: if Ontario (largest labour market) had signed a deal with the feds, the pledge to drop parent costs by 50% in 18 mths, $10/day average in 5 yrs would mean parents would save much more $.
For infant care in Toronto ($1685/mth) difference at 50% is $4k/yr more with Lib plan!

@AbigailBimman The two biggest voting blocs, ON and QC would be worse off.
1. QC doesn't have a cost problem, so the refundable tax credit, even for the poorest families, wouldn't offer much "cash for care" help. It has a "not enough good care" problem, but this platform doesn't address need.

@AbigailBimman 2. ON has cost issues(most expensive in CDA) *and* a not-enough-care issues.
A low-income family with an infant would get ~$4K more from a Liberal promise to cut costs by 50% in 18 months (roughly the time to get the tax credit $ in your pocket) than the "cash for care" Con plan.

@AbigailBimman Families with incomes over $30K wd get even more cash from the Lib vs Con plan, because affordability tied to cost, not fam income.
The Con plan does not address need for care.
Drop cost, demand goes up. That was the issue in Quebec. Cheap, but lousy care for many poor families.

@AbigailBimman Legault campaigned and won on improving the quantity of high-quality care through full-day junior kindergarten (then, later, also expanding the network of Centres de la Petit Enfance).
Con plan "ripping up" existing deals would take $6B from province's efforts to expand care.

@AbigailBimman So the two biggest voting blocs, ON and QC, are worse off with the Con plan than the Liberal plan, even though ON didn't sign.
If we are voting on approaches to early learning and childcare, the two plans are like day and night.
Voters don't get more cash from the Con plan...

@AbigailBimman Nor do voters get cash much faster from the Con plan (tax credits require tax assessments, and its family income, so we're probably not looking at much faster than the timeline for cutting costs in half in 18 mths that is a template for the Lib plan, even if based on 2020 income)

@AbigailBimman OK so QC and ON not better off.
Nor BC, which has been trying (not well) to expand its system, and relying overly much on for-profit care.
The Con plan doesn't care who provides the care, for how much, or even how much high-quality care is available in the market.
Parents do.

@AbigailBimman SK, MB, PEI, 3 Con provinces with newly minted fed-prov deals, which they'll lose.
These parents were offered plans for not only lower costs but more regulated high-quality spaces, and workers better trained/with better working conditions.
What now? #CashForCare won't cut it.

@AbigailBimman The challenge for ANY plan, as my colleague @Kerry_earlyyear has pointed out, is getting the right balance between bringing down fees alongside expansion.
There isn’t an infant space in the country that doesn’t have 10 babies waiting to get in.
Same re high-quality early learning

@AbigailBimman @Kerry_earlyyear Lowering fees doesn't create more spaces, it only creates longer wait lists.
Priming the market a little (O’Toole’s plan) or a lot (as Quebec did) doesn’t address demand, particularly not for vulnerable kids and underserved communities.

@AbigailBimman @Kerry_earlyyear .@Kerry_earlyyear reminds me/us: O’Toole's plan is a reboot of Harper’s plan.

Look, yo-yo policy is a page from the US playbook, and we know how successful that is: if Team Red does x, Team Blue will reverse it; and vice versa.

We need a more constructive, sustainable path.

@AbigailBimman @Kerry_earlyyear Like climate action, the time to have undertaken policies to facilitate the post-pandemic and population aging labour bottlenecks was 40 years ago.

Let's get this right, for parents, for children, for the economy.
#TripleThreat
#FutureOfWorkers