On stonewalling

While the provinces are doing their best to propose a compromise on child care, so far Diane Finley is too busy ignoring the spaces already created in her own riding to listen:

The provinces and territories were rebuffed by federal Human Resources Minister Diane Finley as they presented a united front asking for the Tories to provide money to the provinces for child-care spaces.

NDP Learning Minister Deb Higgins said the provinces thought the Conservatives might be becoming more flexible on the potential use of the $250-million annually it has pledged for tax breaks and grants to create child-care spaces starting next year.

"The frustration for us was that it really provided no validation for the plans and the work and the experience that comes out of the provinces and the territories," Higgins told reporters at the legislature outside a meeting of the provincial cabinet Tuesday morning. "The big concern is that if they spend $250-million on developing spaces, who pays for the ongoing operations and how is that accommodated for? (Finley) again talked about these spaces being self-sustaining, which is pretty impractical when you're looking at lower or low-income families ... There was a fairly blunt meeting in the afternoon and I have to say a fair bit of frustration coming out of it."

If anything, the provinces' willingness to work with the $250 million as the guiding number for creating spaces is more of a concession than they should have had to make. As I've discussed before, a genuine compromise should involve enough funding going to the provinces to make up for the number of spaces which are planned for under the Con plan.

But even with the provinces asking for less than they could be reasonably seeking, the result so far has been a deaf ear from the Cons. And it's not hard to understand the provinces' frustration under those circumstances.