Roundup: Nova Scotia makes two for child care

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Prime minister Justin Trudeau and Iain Rankin, premier of Nova Scotia, announced yesterday that Nova Scotia was now the second province to sign a new childcare agreement with the federal government under the dollars allocated in Budget 2021, and that it would transition the province to halving current fees by next year, and reducing them to the goal of $10/day by 2026, with commitments along the way for those five years. And crucially, there are federal funds going toward training new early childhood educators, as well as to improve the post-secondary programming around ECE, which are important considerations for expanding the system, especially as one of the federal government’s criteria for that expansion is quality of care.

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1414960548735721473

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1415130851755511808

This makes it two provinces down, both of them with non-conservative premiers, and it’s speculated that Newfoundland and Labrador will be next. Alberta claims to be “negotiating” around things like flexibility, but there is a bit of a red herring in there – nothing precludes the province from creating additional, more flexible spaces outside of the federal parameters if they feel they need it, but trying to insist this is about “choice” is a false dichotomy – there can be no actual choice if there is only constrained choice available. In other words, it’s not a real choice if there are no spaces available, and the federal government has long recognized that we have a supply-side problem, which is what they are trying to address. Opposing the federal plan because you claim it’s not flexible enough is, frankly, an abdication of responsibility.

The Conservatives, meanwhile, put out an extremely bizarre “backgrounder” yesterday to claim that the Liberals never meet their promises on childcare, and it was both strange and dishonest. Strange in that this is the kind of thing you’d expect to have an NDP header on it and not a Conservative one, but dishonest because they killed the gods damned system that was in place in 2006. Seriously – Paul Martin’s government had signed agreements with all of the provinces in 2006, and money for the first year was starting to flow when the NDP teamed up with the Conservatives and brought the government down, killing the childcare system that had just been established, because the Conservatives preferred to send $100/month to families instead – because “choice.” Oh, and they created tax credits for new childcare spaces, which created approximately zero of them. They vehemently opposed childcare, and still do, so for them to try and say the Liberals haven’t kept their promises when they actively worked against them and killed the programme that was created is just galling.

Good reads:

  • Justin Trudeau says that he welcomes the report in to GPHIN, and that he hopes to move forward to be better prepared for future outbreaks.
  • Trudeau also says he will leave it up to provinces to come up with any domestic “vaccine passports” (because they own the health data).
  • Here is a look at the current debate around third “booster” doses of mRNA vaccines.
  • It looks like the next series of border measure changes will be fairly minor.
  • Karina Gould says that Canada will continue to send developmental aid to Afghanistan as the US troops complete their withdrawal from the region.
  • The Canadian government is (finally) racing to get interpreters, former embassy workers and other allies in Afghanistan to safety.
  • The Acting Chief of Defence Staff sent out a message to the current and former troops about the situation in Panjwai, after so many Canadian lives were lost there.
  • There are questions as to why twice as many people were rejected making humanitarian and compassionate applications to stay in Canada as pre-pandemic.
  • Another 160 undocumented and unmarked graves have been located at a former residential school in the Southern Gulf Islands.
  • Mary Simon’s installation as Governor General will take place on July 26th.
  • Here is a rundown of how the various parties are looking to recruit diverse candidates for the next election (whenever that may be).
  • The Green Party’s federal council is considering rescinding funding for Annamie Paul’s riding battle, citing the party’s dire financial situation.
  • Kady O’Malley’s Process Nerd column offers a few salient reminders that should be kept in mind as everyone is neck-deep in election speculation.
  • Steve Saideman reflects on the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan and the losses to the Taliban that Canadians fought for.
  • Matt Gurney reminds us of the mere adequacy of the proposed high-frequency rail, and the very low bar of ambition we suffer from with major infrastructure.
  • My column looks through the report on GPHIN warning system, and finds that it did detect COVID at the earliest possible time, but PHAC’s governance is a mess.

Odds and ends:

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2 thoughts on “Roundup: Nova Scotia makes two for child care”

  1. Between childcare and the carbon pricing mechanism, it’s clear that the Liberals are accomplishing actual progressive legislation in a way that is consistent with the constitution. Catherine McKenna’s interview with the National Observer was eye-opening for how she specifically mentioned wrangling with the recalcitrant “Maclean’s Resistance” premiers who the NDP would prefer to ignore and let off the hook, so they can pretend like Trudeau doesn’t care and the Liberals aren’t doing anything. They’re the equivalent of “do something” Democratic Twitter, that expects Biden to waterboard Manchin and Sinema into abolishing the filibuster and will “hold establishment Dems accountable” if they don’t (by staying home and allowing Republicans to be elected).

    The NDP’s hand-wavey populist announcement today makes it clear that the Liberals have by and large rendered them irrelevant — *and* that the NDP are tankies at the core who yearn to wishcast central planning into existence. They have nothing else to run on, because their unicorn promises run into a wall of federalism that they would prefer to pretend isn’t there. They’re the orange left-Trumpers with a platform of “we’ll tear down that wall and make ‘teh rich’ pay for it.” Really how is that any different from Kenney et. al. and the Cons railing against “Laurentian elites”? NDP get mad when Liberals point out horseshoe theory of politics that makes them no better than Cons.

    I really hope that once the campaign gets going, the media actually presses Singh on details that he doesn’t have. The problem is that the media doesn’t like “process stories,” and have stated on several occasions that “voters don’t care about jurisdiction” (it’s their job to make voters care!), and that specifically, the NDP base doesn’t care about jurisdiction because they see “the system” as “colonialist and invalid”. You can’t Tik Tok through the hard slog of legislation. The kids don’t seem to get that. Trudeau does, and now six years on that makes him “uncool”. Reality has a Liberal bias. The NDP are a cult.

    Donald Singh may not like the bigly wall of federalism. but in the outlandish likelihood of him ever being elected, it’d hit him like a ton of bricks when Kenney and Ford want nothing to do with federal intrusion either. It’s not just his turban why he’s going nowhere in Quebec. They are unfit to govern. Just not ready, nice beard (BMW, custom bike, bespoke suit) though.

    • Aaaaand it looks like they want to repeat history, “because it’s 2006”.

      https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-pitfield-dion-ethics-1.6103035

      Absolutely and utterly pathetic act of desperation from an opposition cabal that has literally nothing else. And a broken media apparatus that takes blatantly obvious fishing expeditions at face value. Fife is a hack who should have been canned years ago for his hit job on Arar. They don’t care if women go without childcare because they’re perversely obsessed with tearing down Trudeau. This perpetual Republican style scandal mongering habit is disgusting. It’s completely and utterly sick.

      For Dion, the Canadian James Comey, to even give this more than a passing thought, shows his own gross incompetence. Susan Delacourt is right. In politics you’re only allowed enemies, not friends.

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