EXCERPTS
Federal New Democratic Party Leader Tom Mulcair stopped at a Brampton daycare centre Wednesday morning for a little show and tell about the opposition party's child care election platform.
Mulcair, along with media cameras and reporters, visited the Collegeside Early Learning Centre on the campus of Brampton's Sheridan College. The facility, which serves about 55 kids from infant to pre-school, is operated by Family Day and works with the Region of Peel to offer some parents subsidies that help make child care fees more affordable.
Last November, a study released by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives concluded Brampton had the highest daycare costs in comparison to wages.
In advance of the Conservative government's spring budget and this year's federal election, Mulcair has been touring the country to hear from Canadian voters and deliver the party's position on a number of issues.
For the last three months he has been highlighting the party's promise to increase the number of affordable childcare spaces in Canada.
It's part of the New Democrats' declared focus on meeting the needs of middle class Canadians - a segment of the population Mulcair insisted Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Tories have ignored in favour tax breaks for corporations and the nation's most wealthy.
Past Liberal and Conservative governments have promised much on the national child care front and delivered little or nothing, according to the New Democrats.
"We're planning at the end of eight years to have one million/$15 a day child care spaces," announced Mulcair, who noted it's considered affordable in context of the party's promise to increase federal minimum wage to $15/hour.
Negotiations would take place with each province and the cost of the initiative would be shared 60 per cent by the federal government and 40 per cent by the provinces.
"At the end of eight years it's a $5 billion a year (federal) program," according to Mulcair, who said the cost has been calculated and vetted.
To find that money, he conceded, tough governing choices will have to be made.
"There are things that Mr. Harper is doing that we wouldn't do," he said, suggesting that the New Democrats would find cash by requiring corporations to pay their "fair share" of income taxes.
He mentioned plans to institute corporate tax rates closer to the levels in the other G7 countries.
"Harper's number one priority seems to be to take money away from the middle class and give it to the richest 15 per cent of Canadian society," he remarked.
According to Mulcair, an average cost of $2,000 a month for child care in this country is too expensive for most Canadians with one child and outright crippling to families who have or might consider having more than one kid.
More than half of families in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) can't get by on one income, he noted, so child care is essential to parents who must remain in the workforce.
He described child care as part of a continuum of education with significant social and economic implications for the GTA and Canadian society.
"Government is about making choices and this is for us a clear top priority for when we form government," he said in confidence about the outcome of the scheduled October federal election.