Depending on how you look at it, the four largest federal government spending items will, together, total around $150 billion in the 2026-27 fiscal year.
Not at all convinced that state funded child care is a particularly good idea as with all such programs it encourages more bureaucracy, inefficiency and inequity. Why not consider methods that would allow parents to raise their own children rather than have the state do it. Such things as allowing a parent to stay at home through home care tax breaks and subsidies (not dissimilar to EI) as a start.
I love this conclusion: tens of billions of dollars spent; specific program goals missed; big-picture plans for social change that haven’t worked out; likelihood that the program itself is at least partly to blame; media platforms the public not paying attention — doesn’t that describe other big government programs in Canada, too?
One of the (many) problems is that the one size fits all approach fails to serve the people who need help the most. E.g., for the single mom who juggles 3 part time jobs, daycare services aligned to white collar/9 to5 working hours are not useful. The childcare subsidy should be a means tested benefit, paid directly to the taxpayer, who can then use it for institutionalized child warehousing services, or to pay a family member or friend to watch the kids for a few hours so mom can work her shift at Tim Hortons, or whatever works for their situation.
The right answer is to treat children as people. Total the family income, divide by the number of family members, and tax each person on that basis. 5 unrelated people sharing a house shouldn't pay vastly less tax than a family of 5 on the same income.
Yes. Basic personal amount should be for everyone and should be transferable from dependents. It should also be raised to the cost of living, which I am confident is higher than $16,452 this year.
Canada, like most of the remnants of western civilization is at end stage democracy where the bankrupt welfare state is in transition to tyranny. This is a place where the political cycles demand continuous vote buying by successful political parties. Whether the Jacobin politicians promise $10 dollar daycare, universal heath care or 2 billion trees, the politician hands-off all details to the increasingly administrative state for implementation. The political cycles continue and no electable party intends to balance the budget while rationing (starving) past promises of the "actual costs" of the bought votes, thus managed. The resulting sociology is a nation where increasingly all adult responsibilities are outsourced to a state increasingly dysfunctional and broke.
Thank you for this. It needs to get much more attention in the media and parliament.
When my child was born we signed up for daycare right away, only to find out the waiting list for licensed CWELCC centres (virtually all had signed up) was past two years and that people were registering when they found out they were pregnant. Given we were expecting only 18 months of parental leave, this was a problem. We've handled it with unpaid leave but it has been financially crippling as we lost our space (after two and a half years waiting) and were placed back on the wait list (so our kid would in theory be in grade 1...).
This was entirely predictable: queues exploded with the subsidy and turned daycare into a lottery. While before only the better off could afford the $1,500 to $2,000 per month, there were spaces. Typically low income mothers stayed home. Now it's higher earners stuck with a system staying home years at a time. But the narrative is that it's a succes and Canada has $10/day daycare.
That's certainly a problem that would be good for opposition members to push back on. But I would suggest that the far bigger problem is that, by design, even the $10/day goals are missing the mark and failing to address the core problems that the program was supposed to fix.
Wealth, quantified as money on a balance sheet, is paid to individuals, or entities of individuals, for their labour used in utilization of natural resources and government hard and soft assets. Might one assume that the excess of GDP over the total national earned income is wealth (money) earned/created, not by the individual Canadian, but by the nation/society. That being the case every Canadian should receive an equal annual return on their pro rata share of the return on Canada’s equity.
Should you agree with this rationality, I would welcome being allowed to provide you with my concepts of eliminating income and point of sale taxation to be replaced by taxation based on money (wealth) circulation. Such is the only data that defines a strong and factual relationship between individual Canadians. And which would eliminate the conflicts and costs of administrating thousands of pages of laws and regulations.
Not at all convinced that state funded child care is a particularly good idea as with all such programs it encourages more bureaucracy, inefficiency and inequity. Why not consider methods that would allow parents to raise their own children rather than have the state do it. Such things as allowing a parent to stay at home through home care tax breaks and subsidies (not dissimilar to EI) as a start.
This is a great column David!
I love this conclusion: tens of billions of dollars spent; specific program goals missed; big-picture plans for social change that haven’t worked out; likelihood that the program itself is at least partly to blame; media platforms the public not paying attention — doesn’t that describe other big government programs in Canada, too?
One of the (many) problems is that the one size fits all approach fails to serve the people who need help the most. E.g., for the single mom who juggles 3 part time jobs, daycare services aligned to white collar/9 to5 working hours are not useful. The childcare subsidy should be a means tested benefit, paid directly to the taxpayer, who can then use it for institutionalized child warehousing services, or to pay a family member or friend to watch the kids for a few hours so mom can work her shift at Tim Hortons, or whatever works for their situation.
The right answer is to treat children as people. Total the family income, divide by the number of family members, and tax each person on that basis. 5 unrelated people sharing a house shouldn't pay vastly less tax than a family of 5 on the same income.
Then get rid of child care subsidies altogether.
This is the correct answer. Tax the family unit, not the individuals.
Yes. Basic personal amount should be for everyone and should be transferable from dependents. It should also be raised to the cost of living, which I am confident is higher than $16,452 this year.
Canada, like most of the remnants of western civilization is at end stage democracy where the bankrupt welfare state is in transition to tyranny. This is a place where the political cycles demand continuous vote buying by successful political parties. Whether the Jacobin politicians promise $10 dollar daycare, universal heath care or 2 billion trees, the politician hands-off all details to the increasingly administrative state for implementation. The political cycles continue and no electable party intends to balance the budget while rationing (starving) past promises of the "actual costs" of the bought votes, thus managed. The resulting sociology is a nation where increasingly all adult responsibilities are outsourced to a state increasingly dysfunctional and broke.
Thank you for this. It needs to get much more attention in the media and parliament.
When my child was born we signed up for daycare right away, only to find out the waiting list for licensed CWELCC centres (virtually all had signed up) was past two years and that people were registering when they found out they were pregnant. Given we were expecting only 18 months of parental leave, this was a problem. We've handled it with unpaid leave but it has been financially crippling as we lost our space (after two and a half years waiting) and were placed back on the wait list (so our kid would in theory be in grade 1...).
This was entirely predictable: queues exploded with the subsidy and turned daycare into a lottery. While before only the better off could afford the $1,500 to $2,000 per month, there were spaces. Typically low income mothers stayed home. Now it's higher earners stuck with a system staying home years at a time. But the narrative is that it's a succes and Canada has $10/day daycare.
I checked the Treasury Board Main Estimates myself. That 9.2 billion dollars flows every year now for early learning and child care. StatsCan shows average full-time centre fees dropped to 435 dollars a month by 2025. The 10-dollar-a-day target was supposed to hit this month. It makes you wonder what the House committees will ask next about those waitlists. https://www.canada.ca/en/treasury-board-secretariat/services/planned-government-spending/government-expenditure-plan-main-estimates/2026-27-estimates.html
That's certainly a problem that would be good for opposition members to push back on. But I would suggest that the far bigger problem is that, by design, even the $10/day goals are missing the mark and failing to address the core problems that the program was supposed to fix.
Wealth, quantified as money on a balance sheet, is paid to individuals, or entities of individuals, for their labour used in utilization of natural resources and government hard and soft assets. Might one assume that the excess of GDP over the total national earned income is wealth (money) earned/created, not by the individual Canadian, but by the nation/society. That being the case every Canadian should receive an equal annual return on their pro rata share of the return on Canada’s equity.
Should you agree with this rationality, I would welcome being allowed to provide you with my concepts of eliminating income and point of sale taxation to be replaced by taxation based on money (wealth) circulation. Such is the only data that defines a strong and factual relationship between individual Canadians. And which would eliminate the conflicts and costs of administrating thousands of pages of laws and regulations.