Canada Election 2021

[Rex Francorum]

I am a Quebec nationalist and federal politics are relevant to me.

I am glad you recognize that

I meant not relevant. Besides, nationalist does not = independantist, per se.

[Jacob]

The Conservative plan though benefits all parents with tax credits that cover up to 75% of child care costs for low-income families.

Tax credits are vastly inferior to point-of-purchase price reductions if you're living pay-cheque to pay-cheque, which most low-income families are. Also, tax credits do very little to establish additional daycare spots, while direct subsidies to daycares per student provides a much more reliable business case for people looking to open new daycares.

IMO the Conservative tax credit plan is an attempt to sound like they want to help poor people while catering to the preferences of the comfortable middle class.

[crazy canuck]

Has CC voted Conservative in the past?

Has Beeb voted Green in the past?

I think that informs the level of credibility of any statement that the were seriously considering voting for either party in the future.

We've been over this before - I'm VERY open to voting for different parties.  In the past I've voted for the Conservatives, the Progressive Conservatives, the United Conservatives, Reform, Canadian Alliance, Wildrose, Yukon Party and once even the Libertarian Party!

For those who might be fooled by all the names, they are actually the same thing - the most conservative option available to BB at the time.  Canadian Alliance was just a rebranding of the Reform party and the Conservatives are the merger of the Progressive Conservatives and the Canadian Alliance.

[crazy canuck]

Yeah, plenty of reason for O'Toole and his supporters to be optimistic. I guess maybe we won't get inexpensive daycare after all.

Child care is one of the issues I feel most strongly that the Conservatives are on the right track.

The Liberal $10 / day daycare plan is great - IF you want to have you kids in daycare, and IF you manage to get one of the spots (the roll out will take years and years).

The Conservative plan though benefits all parents with tax credits that cover up to 75% of child care costs for low-income families.

Yeah that is just the point.  The Conservative plan will benefit those parents who can afford to pay for daycare and wait for their tax refund a year later.  So not many low income families will actually benefit.  The Liberal plan is much better if one wants to benefit low income families.  And especially workers, mainly women, who cannot now work because the cost of daycare is too high or it is unavailable to them.

[Barrister]

The Conservative plan though benefits all parents with tax credits that cover up to 75% of child care costs for low-income families.

Tax credits are vastly inferior to point-of-purchase price reductions if you're living pay-cheque to pay-cheque, which most low-income families are. Also, tax credits do very little to establish additional daycare spots, while direct subsidies to daycares per student provides a much more reliable business case for people looking to open new daycares.

IMO the Conservative tax credit plan is an attempt to sound like they want to help poor people while catering to the preferences of the comfortable middle class.

The Conservative plan will have those credits paid out over the year to cover objection number one.

Their plan is also heavily weighted by income.  One quote (from a CBC artcle):

On Monday, Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole released his party's full policy platform document, which detailed that a Conservative government would scrap the $30-billion Liberal child-care program.

The Conservative platform document explained that the party would replace the Liberal system by converting the existing child-care expense deduction into a refundable tax credit to cover up to 75 per cent child-care costs for low-income families.

The party projects that a family with an income of $30,000 would receive up to $6,000 to cover child-care costs, more than the $1,200 they can claim under the refund today, and that a family with an income of $50,000 would get $5,200.

The money would be paid out during the year to avoid forcing parents to wait for their tax refunds to pay for child care.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/child-care-conservatives-liberals-ndp-greens-bloc-1.6144317

(which also covers CC's objection on the same point)

[Barrister]

Has CC voted Conservative in the past?

Has Beeb voted Green in the past?

I think that informs the level of credibility of any statement that the were seriously considering voting for either party in the future.

We've been over this before - I'm VERY open to voting for different parties.  In the past I've voted for the Conservatives, the Progressive Conservatives, the United Conservatives, Reform, Canadian Alliance, Wildrose, Yukon Party and once even the Libertarian Party!

For those who might be fooled by all the names, they are actually the same thing - the most conservative option available to BB at the time.  Canadian Alliance was just a rebranding of the Reform party and the Conservatives are the merger of the Progressive Conservatives and the Canadian Alliance.

Did you miss the ?

Yes - I'm an ideological voter (which puts me in a tiny minority).  But it goes to show you I'm not a party-above-all voter.  Wat I care about are ideas, not party labels.

[crazy canuck]

Have you done the math regarding how many days of day care $5,200 pays for? 

How does this remotely help the poor afford day care better than the Liberal plan? 

[crazy canuck]

Has CC voted Conservative in the past?

Has Beeb voted Green in the past?

I think that informs the level of credibility of any statement that the were seriously considering voting for either party in the future.

We've been over this before - I'm VERY open to voting for different parties.  In the past I've voted for the Conservatives, the Progressive Conservatives, the United Conservatives, Reform, Canadian Alliance, Wildrose, Yukon Party and once even the Libertarian Party!

For those who might be fooled by all the names, they are actually the same thing - the most conservative option available to BB at the time.  Canadian Alliance was just a rebranding of the Reform party and the Conservatives are the merger of the Progressive Conservatives and the Canadian Alliance.

Did you miss the ?

Yes - I'm an ideological voter (which puts me in a tiny minority).  But it goes to show you I'm not a party-above-all voter.  Wat I care about are ideas, not party labels.

Of course you are, you have been a consistent Reform voter throughout your whole adult life.  It is just that the Reform party changes its name from time to time.

[Barrister]

Have you done the math regarding how many days of day care $5,200 pays for? 

How does this remotely help the poor afford day care better than the Liberal plan?

Well for starters the poor get $6,000, not $5,200.  Which is $500 per month.  I seem to recall paying something like $700 per kid, so what seems like it works out pretty well.

And the other point is that the Conservative plan looks after child care, not day care.  Child care comes in many different forms - not only in organized and regulated day care spots.

[Jacob]

Have you done the math regarding how many days of day care $5,200 pays for? 

How does this remotely help the poor afford day care better than the Liberal plan?

The daycare we sent my boy to is $1,350/ month which ends up at $16,200/ year. For arguments sake, lets say my family is low income and gets the full $5,200/ year. That leaves the cost at $11,000 year, which in turn is $917 month. For arguments sake, let's call it 22 working days in a month, that works out $42/ day.

With no subsidy, using the same 22 working days but paying the full $1,350, that's $61/ day. So a savings of $19/ day.

Conversely, $10/ day for 22 working days is $220/ month or  $2,640/ year.

Now maybe there's some trickery around the $10/ day figure, and maybe the Liberal plan will fall down in implementation. But $10/ day at point of purchase sounds significantly superior to $42/ day.

EDIT:

So $6,000/ year would reduce the monthly payable to $750, which brings the daily down to $34.

EDIT #2: Using the average Vancouver fee of $1,112/ month with the Conservative plan that then becomes $512/ month, which takes the daily down to $23 (assuming prices haven't changed since 2019).

[Jacob]

Report on the average (median) daycare fees in Canada's largest 37 urban centres: https://childcarecanada.org/documents/research-policy-practice/20/03/progress-child-care-fees-canada-2019

Excluding Quebec markets (which already has the subsidy and comes in at $179 for infants, toddlers, and pre-school in all markets)

Five of the cheapest are (for infants/ toddlers/ pre-school):

Winnipeg ($651 / $451/ $451)
Charlottetown ($738/ $608/ $586)
Moncton ($856/ $716/ $722)
Fredricton ($850/ $727/ $690)
Regina ($856/ $680/ $620)

Five of the most expensive are:

Iqualut ($1,300/ $1,213/ $1,213)
Oakville ($1,503/ $1,327/ $1,210)
Markham ($1,541/ $1,285/ $1,180)
Vaughan ($1,545/ $1,327/ $1,120)
Toronto ($1,774/ $1,457/ $1,207)

For local reference:

Vancouver ($1,112/ $1,112/ $954)
Edmonton ($1,075/ $917/ $875)

These are all 2019 figures.

I guess it's evident that the tax credit that maxes out at $6,000/ year is significantly better for people who live in markets with lower daycare costs, and significantly less good than the Liberals proposed plan for people living in expensive markets.

There are probably political implications there....

[crazy canuck]

Have you done the math regarding how many days of day care $5,200 pays for? 

How does this remotely help the poor afford day care better than the Liberal plan?

Well for starters the poor get $6,000, not $5,200.  Which is $500 per month.  I seem to recall paying something like $700 per kid, so what seems like it works out pretty well.

And the other point is that the Conservative plan looks after child care, not day care.  Child care comes in many different forms - not only in organized and regulated day care spots.

50k a year in Vancouver is, with the cost of housing here, pretty much poor.

But that aside, the median cost of daycare in Vancouver in 2019, according to this article - which is the first google hit.  was 1400 per month.  Toronto was $1,685.  Edmonton was 975 (so it seems you are an outlier).

https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/report-vancouver-still-among-most-expensive-cities-for-child-care-but-new-policies-offer-hope#:~:text=The%20median%20cost%20of%20full,and%20%241%2C000%20for%20a%20preschooler.

edit: Jacob beat me to it.  The Conservative plan seems tailored to appeal to their base rather than, as they claim, helping all people in Canada have affordable child care.

[Josephus]

With respect to the Greens... I think I mentioned this in the past, but my brother was moderately involved in the Green Party pre-Elizabeth May.  He made a reasonably compelling argument - that they were fiscally pretty conservative with a middle of the road stance on social issues but of course a strong emphasis on the environment.  The reason I didn't follow him there was at that time (mid 2000s) they were a fringe party getting low single digits in elections (and no MPs) and thus seemed very much like a wasted vote.

I'd been saying that for years. Despite what people thought, the Greens were fairly right-centrists. Yes, they switched under May.

[viper37]

Proposing to twist federal law in knots to create a special application of language laws is just one more nail in the coffin.  I have no difficulty with a province legislating within its constitutional jurisdiction.  The Feds have no constitutional jurisdiction to create special regional federal laws.  It is political pandering pure and simple.

How would your protect the rights of French speaking workers in Quebec then?

[viper37]

That's like me saying I would consider voting Green if they endorsed fiscal responsibility and nuclear power.

I mean it's true - I would - but that's never going to happen.

See that is why I don't believe O'Toole when he says the Conservatives will take climate change seriously. Ain't never going to happen.  As you say.

Which party takes global warming seriously?
Which party has ever taken global warming seriously, with realistic, concrete proposals to be implemented/implemented once they won the election?