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The federal government’s 2021 budget introduces a daycare program, fashioned after Quebec’s, as a $10-a-day, 50/50 shared-cost conditional grant program with the provinces. By adopting a conditional grant program that requires a one-size-fits-all approach without recognizing provincial differences in fiscal capacity, the program will take too long to implement and fail to meet the needs of Canada’s diverse workforce.
Daycare regulation is a provincial responsibility and the needed policies to achieve the goal of making daycare more affordable and accessible vary across Canada. What works in Quebec might not work in Nova Scotia or Saskatchewan. The success of the federal daycare initiative will depend significantly on how much flexibility the provinces have to design daycare programs that suit their unique needs.
Article content
The federal government’s 2021 budget introduces a daycare program, fashioned after Quebec’s, as a $10-a-day, 50/50 shared-cost conditional grant program with the provinces. By adopting a conditional grant program that requires a one-size-fits-all approach without recognizing provincial differences in fiscal capacity, the program will take too long to implement and fail to meet the needs of Canada’s diverse workforce.
Daycare regulation is a provincial responsibility and the needed policies to achieve the goal of making daycare more affordable and accessible vary across Canada. What works in Quebec might not work in Nova Scotia or Saskatchewan. The success of the federal daycare initiative will depend significantly on how much flexibility the provinces have to design daycare programs that suit their unique needs.
Winners to be announced virtually June 9 at a free online event.
After promising a full-fledged public consultation on his widely condemned plans to open up the Rockies to Australian miners, the premier has now told Albertans that the review won’t include anything that matters like water and land use. Coal mining will be the only subject.
Breaking promises and betraying Albertans appear to be constant themes of Kenney’s government. Its coal saga is a prime example.
In 2017, the aspiring premier vowed to “get the Alberta government out of the business of business. because when politicians are risking your money instead of their own, you might as well send them to the casino. I mean, they have no incentive to get it right.”
‘No More Pipelines Bill’ C-69 Alberta’s Next Legal Hope
Having recently lost its constitutional challenge against federal carbon pricing in Canada’s top court, Alberta is still in the fight against Bill C-69, the Impact Assessment Act.
Multibillion-dollar investments in resource and pipeline development are not all that is at stake. Provincial-federal relations and Western alienation are collateral issues in what promises to be an extended battle.
‘Sucker Punch’
Passed on June 21, 2019, Bill C-69 lengthened the review process for proposed energy projects by adding a new phase of consultation at the front end. The legislation allowed a wider range of interests to appeal proposed projects and called for “Indigenous knowledge” and the “intersection of sex and gender with other identity factors” in approvals. C-69 also gave cabinet the final say.