Promise broken

The issue seems to have largely faded away with the recent focus on the environment. But the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada points out that the Cons not only haven't yet created a single child care space, they haven't even come up with a plan to try to meet their commitment of 25,000 spaces a year:

The Conservative government has not produced any new child-care spaces despite promising before the election a year ago to create 25,000 spots within 12 months, critics say.

In a report to be released Thursday, the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada calls on the government to abandon its plan, which it describes as piecemeal. The non-profit group demands the government come up with a more comprehensive strategy...

Harper (had) said a Conservative government would create 125,000 spaces over five years with the help of the private sector and non-profit organizations which would get a $10,000 tax credit for every space created.

"We figure we'll reasonably create about 25,000 spaces a year," Harper said then.

A year later, no spaces have been created and the plan for more spaces hasn't been completed yet...

Monte Solberg, who became minister of human resources and social development in the cabinet shuffle on Jan. 4, was not available to comment. His office said he was still learning the file.

It's worth comparing the Cons' action to that on the environment to see just how PMS plans to treat progressive issues in the future.

The Cons' recent willingness to at least talk and posture about the environment signals that Harper isn't completely immune to shifting political sands. But at the same time, it appears that it takes a push from every other party, the media, and a strong set of public interest groups all at once to force the Cons to take an issue (relatively) seriously. Meanwhile, the experience with child care suggests that any break in that type of pressure is taken by the Cons as an opportunity to ignore an issue no matter what they've promised.

Which means that for anything good to come of the Cons' stay in power, the opposition strategy going forward has to be to deal with the most urgent issue which the Cons politically can't afford to ignore, then let the Cons fall on their wider program. Fortunately, that appears to be exactly what Layton plans to do - and if the other opposition parties join in the task, then PMS may not have any choice as to whether he wants to play along.