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EXCERPTS
Everyone who's been cheering on the Conservative party's plan to give families an annual $1,200 allowance for each child under six is in for a shock if Stephen Harper becomes prime minister.
Free money to help poor people raise their kids sounds great. But the Tory campaign pledge is neither free nor particularly helpful to those struggling to make ends meet.
The money would be taxed, unlike the current Canada Child Tax Benefit, and it would help the rich much more than the poor.
There are no punishing clawbacks with the child tax benefit program, which has been available to all low- and middle-income families since 1998 and is based on income.
With the Conservative plan, however, what you see is not what you would get, as the Caledon Institute of Social Policy noted in an analysis yesterday.
"The overwhelming majority of Canadian families would end up with a child-care allowance worth considerably less than $1,200 per child," says the report.
In fact, the plan favours one-earner families over single-parent families and two-earner homes.
The Caledon Institute crunched some numbers using Ontario families and found that the Tory child-care allowance would pay its lowest amount to families with modest incomes close to the poverty line.
A dual-income couple with two kids (one under six) and income of $36,000 would end up with an allowance worth only $388 - one-third of the $1,200 face-value payment.
In contrast, a one-earner couple with two kids and income of $33,000 would end up with $650.
A much richer family, with one earner making $100,000, would get to keep $1,032 of the child-care allowance.
Let's make the poor pay.
It seems to be the Tory way.
The proposed child-care allowance would provide an unnecessary subsidy to the rich, while doing little for low- or middle-income families that don't have access to subsidized child care, the report adds.
The Caledon Institute proposes a better idea - using the $1.6 billion it estimates the Tories would spend on a child-care allowance to boost the Canada Child Tax Benefit.
The bottom line is most Canadian families would end up with much less than the $1,200 the Tories are promising.
"Even if you believe that it's better for government to put its money into families directly rather than child-care centres, it's not a very good program," says Battle.
- reprinted from the Edmonton Sun