errata: child care

between the stepford smirk and affected (think neve campbell) speech patterns, it was truly an effort for me to tolerate stephen harper during tonight's debate. never mind that most of what comes out of his mouth makes my entire body tense.

because i've been working on this issue more closely lately, i'm more concerned with the fact that no one - pretty much ever - corrects paul martin on child care. he shouldn't be allowed to hoist up his so-called child care program like a fucking trophy during this campaign. after a decade of continued broken promises by the liberals on this, last year finally saw some progress on child care, due in no small part to pressure from the ndp and advocacy groups. what was drummed up, however, sure ain't all that.

some of us didn't expect the issue of child care to come up again in tonight's debate. but there it was, popping up under every fucking theme category. those bastards even managed to raise it during the segment on national unity. as an issue, child care has such legs during this election for two reasons: 1) harper's sexy campaign pledge of cash to parents, and 2) martin's refrain that child care is a promise delivered. but i can't believe martin got out of tonight's debate without effectively being called on it. gets me mad.

so let me go over just a few hits and misses of the liberal child care program:

hit - commitment to making child care a permanent program, a la medicare

miss - zero legislative framework - ensuring accountability for public child care dollars would mean introducing actual legislation so as to enshrine standards for quality, universality, inclusiveness, accessibility, and developmental programming

hit - commitment to sustained funding, up from five years to ten

miss - zero increase in funding - to actually fund a national child care program paul, we need substantial annual increases - new child care spaces in one year will require the current annual funding commitment just to continue operating - and by the way, your current commitment is actually LESS than what you offered in 2004

hit - agreements with provinces and territories directing funds to a system of regulated community-based programs

miss - zero commitment to establish child care as a public service - how committed are you, mr. martin, to public health care if you are so reluctant to direct federal funding to not-for-profit child care?