Bared clawbacks

The Globe and Mail reports on another way in which the Cons' child-care plan will benefit wealthy parents far more than poorer ones:

The Conservative plan for meeting the country's child-care needs is to give families a direct payment of $100 a month, $1,200 annually, for every child under 6. The specifics of how that plan will be unveiled are expected to be in next Tuesday's budget.

But the young-child supplement of the Canada Child Tax Benefit, which currently pays $20.25 a month to parents who do not claim child-care expenses for their preschool-age children, will be eliminated at the same time. The benefit is due to increase in July to $249 annually...

The (Caledon Institute) has calculated that the families who will benefit most from the child-care allowance, after taxes and clawbacks, are those making $200,000 a year or more with one parent at home. They will keep $1,076 of the $1,200 annually.

Families with two working parents and a combined income of $30,000, by contrast, will keep just $199 annually of the new payments.

Naturally, the Cons' parliamentary party line doesn't seem to involve any acknowledgement of the lack of benefit to working-class parents. Instead, Diane Finley apparently took pride in the possibility that the entire amount of the "benefit" may be clawed back from poorer parents by only some provinces rather than all of them...while refusing to listen to the possibility that the federal government could avoid its own set of clawbacks.

Ultimately, Finley's answer only highlights a second layer of clawbacks which hadn't even been asked about. And the commitment of some provinces to do better than the Cons are willing to do federally offers only another reason why the Cons' plan is flawed - not a reason to believe that it's anything approaching fair to the parents who most need help to meet their child-care requirements.