OF COURSE HE DOES ITS THE POLITICS OF WHINING

Alberta premier snipes at Trudeau as province signs on to $10-day child-care deal

EDMONTON — Alberta has signed on to Ottawa’s $10-a-day child-care program, but not before Premier Jason Kenney dismissed the federal contribution as recycled provincial money and accused Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of playing favourites.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

“This agreement means bringing 3.8 billion tax dollars paid by Albertans to Ottawa back to Albertans to address a key priority for so many families,” Kenney, with Trudeau at his side, said Monday during an event at a downtown YMCA.

The United Conservative premier accused Trudeau of playing favourites by giving Quebec a child-care deal with more flexibility, while Alberta had to fight to get what it considered a fair bargain for its mix of care providers. More than half of current care spaces in Alberta are in privately run businesses.

“It’s not the only time where we see what appears to be a two-tier federation,” said Kenney.

“The basic aspiration of Albertans is to be treated equally, to have the same powers that Quebec exercises and the same treatment from the federal government, which includes unconditional funding when there are national policy goals.”

That comment prompted Trudeau to take to the podium to stress that Quebec was not getting sweetheart treatment.

He said Quebec’s plan already met the goals of the federal program and, in fact, exceeded them with $8.50-a-day child care.

“It made no sense for us to impose conditions (on Quebec) that they’ve already surpassed,” said Trudeau. “It’s not about treating one province differently.

“If Alberta already had child care at $8 a day across the province, we would have had an approach similar to Quebec, so let’s not create constitutional conventions out of this.”

Kenney has often criticized the Liberal federal government for treating Alberta unfairly in Confederation. He has said that Albertans contribute generously to the rest of Canada through equalization yet are stymied at times by federal policies that restrict development of the province's oil and gas industry.

The bilateral deal is to provide $3.8 billion in federal funding over the next five years. Child-care fees are to be halved starting next year and reduced to an average of $10 a day by 2026

The deal also calls for the creation of 42,500 new regulated early-learning and child-care spaces.

"Within five years, $10-a-day child care will be a reality right across the province,” said Trudeau.

"This will make a huge difference in the lives of all families but also in our economic recovery.”

Choice of child care had been a sticking point in negotiations between Ottawa and Alberta.

PRIVATE DAY HOMES & BABA CARE

Kenney said the Alberta agreement will make the subsidies eligible for all types of licensed facilities for child care up to age six.

"The province has secured a deal to allow Alberta parents to have the type of child care that works best for them, which has been a key element of any deal this government would sign,” he said.

The agreement is to fund services and grow the workforce for early childhood teachers.

The money is also to support child care for children with disabilities or special needs as well as a plan to work with Indigenous organizations to develop child-care programs best suited to their needs.

The federal government has completed bilateral $10-a-day care deals with nine provinces and territories. Ontario, New Brunswick, Nunavut and the Northwest Territories have yet to sign on.

Trudeau’s government announced the $30-billion, five-year plan in the spring as a cornerstone in an initiative to help families and get the economy moving.

Rakhi Pancholi, the Alberta Opposition's children’s services critic, said the deal is similar to what the NDP caucus proposed in July.

The deal should have been done much earlier to get benefits flowing faster, she said. It was only persistent demands from the public that broke the deadlock, she added.

“Ultimately, Albertans told the UCP that this affordable child-care program was important to them,” said Pancholi. “The UCP were never on board, they dragged their heels, but Albertans made their voice loud and clear to get us where we are today.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 15, 2021.

Dean Bennett, The Canadian Press

Alberta, Ottawa ink $3.8-billion childcare deal to lower cost to average of $10-a-day, create 40,000 new spaces

Author of the article:

Ashley Joannou
Publishing date: Nov 15, 2021 • 

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Alberta Premier Jason Kenney announced a childcare deal for the province on Monday. 

PHOTO BY SEAN KILPATRICK/THE CANADIAN PRESS; IAN KUCERAK/POSTMEDIA
Article content

Alberta and the federal government have reached a five-year $3.8 billion childcare agreement using the federal funding to create more than 40,000 new childcare and early learning spaces and bring the average cost for children under six down to $10-a-day.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Deputy Minister Chrystia Freeland announced the deal Monday, alongside Premier Jason Kenney and Families, Children and Social Development Minister Karina Gould.

“Now, I think people know that the provinces and the federal government don’t always get along on everything. And there’s always going to be points of disagreement. But I am really, really pleased to be here today with Premier Kenney and the Government of Alberta to demonstrate that on the things that matter most to citizen, on the things that matter to the people that we serve, we can get big things done,” Trudeau said.

“That’s exactly what we’ve been able to do here today with Alberta on moving forward with a historic agreement on childcare.”

Alberta is the ninth jurisdiction to sign a childcare deal with Ottawa. Freeland estimated 60% of Canada’s children are now covered under a deal.

Kenney had previously said that Trudeau’s deal was “only for a kind of cookie-cutter, nine-to-five, urban, government and union-run institutional daycare options” and that the choices of parents need to be recognized.

On Monday, he called the announcement “a good day for Alberta families.”

He said Alberta’s deal will mean more jobs and access to childcare for families.

“All types of licensed childcare for kids aged up to kindergarten like preschools, daycare and licensed family day homes will now be supported through this deal with the federal government,” he said.

“And to ensure that every child has the care that works for them, there’s funding for specific needs, such as linguistic, cultural and special learning supports.”

The 2021 federal budget said Ottawa would authorize the transfer of 2021-22 funding as soon as bilateral agreements are reached.

Blogging Tory's Don't Get Day Care

It is obvious that it is Conservative men making the comments about the problem with the idea of publicly funded, certified, non-profit day care centres for being too institutional (subtext it's a prison) and a one size fits all without flexibility for working parents, and it won't work in rural Canada, and, and, and, and......

Tories offer Choice in Childcare says Bill McBeath, Conservative Organizer for Edmonton
Strange as it seems, the tory policy for childcare centres around... wait for it... choice! The fundamental idea that parents are the best people to raise children, and hsould be allowed to choose where government money (tax money, their money) get spent.The tory plan is more generous, more flexible, and more in touch with the many different families in Canada. Unlike the inflexible 9-5 institutional daycare plan of the Liberals, the Conservative plan allows parents who are shift workers, lower-income families, stay at home parents, and all families in general meet their child care needs.

When it isn't the Harper attacking public regulated day care it's one of the male conservatives in the blogosphere. Like my fellow Redmontonian; DazzlinDino of the Blogging Party of Canada. He says the following and it is the oft repeated criticism that the Conservatives are using as their messaging;

Let me make this clear, the federal daycare idea, the nine to five life, does not work for far too many people. How many of you would actually be able to take advantage of this. Can you tell your boss "Sorry, I can only work from 10-4 cause my kid is in daycare."? Think he is going to be looking for a replacement? If you live in a small community, will you benifit from this.....NO YOU WON't. I'm not a big fan of either idea, but there is no way a federal daycare would work, not in a private sector......

Yep he has obviously not sent his kids to daycare or aftercare. Lots of families work around their day care hours, parents adapting their work patterns to their family needs. Many working families who don't have the choice of having a well paid job that can support a stay at home parent, choose work that offers them at least the chance to have one parent off shift at home. Because there ARE NO PUBLIC DAY CARE SPACES FOR THEM.

Hmm I thought more and more employers were being flexible, thats all the rhetoric that unions face when negotiating for shift work. And speaking of the private sector it is Corporate Canada that has been derelict in its duty in providing on site day care for its employees. Been waiting for tax breaks I guess. Wait they have gotten tax breaks, they just didn't use them for day care for their workers. The CIBC got an innovation award this year from the Conference Board of Canada because they actually did create a flexible day care option for their workers. They were one of the only private corporations in Canada to do this hence the award. Whereas many public institutions are ahead of Corporate Canada, especially post seconday education institutions, when it comes to offering its staff and students day care.

Those of the professional classes are the ones who want a tax credit, not out of some wish to help single mothers or working class parents who have two jobs to make ends meet. But with typical conservative aplomb, they can afford to have a stay at home mom who gives up her lucrative career because dad has a lucrative career too, they believe they are being cheated and should have the same advantage of the family of two working parents or the single mother. As if being a member of the working poor or a single mother is a 'choice', like the one they made.

My wife and I have made made the descision that it is best for our family (and two daughters) if one of us were at home. My wife is a brilliant (and beautiful...hi sweety) person who completed a Physics Degree and Education Degree and gave up a career in teaching to raise our kids.We gave up her salary and day care tax breaks - but we did so gladly. It is our choice and all we ask is for our government to stay out of our business. Stop saying that we are ignorant. Stop comparing stay-at-home parents to people who would choose not to use a doctor for medical care - as if day care professionals can be a better parent. Political Staples

This is the same arguement made by right wingers about abortion. I remember debating a woman who had university law degree, but choose to stay at home and have children. She was a voracious opponent of a womans right to choose, abortion. Her husband was a vice president of a major oil company. She could afford to have a child, and she probably eventually had a nanny to. She insisted that a woman had no right to choose abortion, rather she should 'choose' to have the child and 'choose' to stay home and raise the child, like Ms. Professional did.

Fellow Redmonton blogger Idealistic Pragmatist also commented on Staples arguement and noted that it all comes down to a fetish of making a social issue into a 'personal issue'. A comment to his blog article clearly points out that for the majority of working Canadian families day care is a very real social neccesity, not a matter of personal choice.

But to be fair while many of the bloggers on this topic are men, its not just men who promote this false dichotomy between baby sitting and public day care. Edmonton Spruce Grove Conservative MP and psuedo-feminist, Rona Ambrose, who challenged the Liberal plan in the House as being a plan proposed by 'old white men',again identifies what makes the Tory plan different than the Liberals. It will pay for parents to leave their kids with babysitters, "a relative, a grandparent, or a neighbour" she told Mike Duffy on CTV today.

Conservative MP Rona Ambrose, who represents Edmonton-Spruce Grove, worked with Harper to write the Conservative child-care policy. She spoke with Larry Johnsrude, reporter/editor for edmontonjournal.com.
"We feel very strongly that our plan should be universal and equitable. The Liberal plan is regulated nine-to-five public day care through an public infrastructure and is a small percentage of the total child-care options being used by parents right now and is their last choice. Their first choice is for one of them to stay at home if they can afford to. Their second choice is (to leave their children) with a trusted neighbour or friend and the last choice is institutionalized care."

So it's ok to leave your kids with a stranger, the neighbour but not with trained certified early childhood educators. "Who knows better than parents how to raise their kids" says Rona. Well would you leave the education of your children to "a relative, a grandparent, or a neighbour" ? Of course not, unless like many social conservatives you choose home schooling. But home schooling is not a public education system. And neither is the Tory plan a national day care program.

If there are no public day care spaces then there is no real choice for parents. The choice is "a relative, a grandparent, or a neighbour". Which was the choice my parents had when the worked out of the home forty years ago. I was baby sat by my Baba and Dido, and my parents got their monthly family allowance cheque for my sister and I. Yep the Tory plan could be called Forward to the Past.

Whereas the NDP plan announced today will guarantee, by legislation, the creation of public regulated certified, non profit day care centres. And it will give parents real economic choice by giving a $1000 tax credit per child, while subsidizing child care space to the tune of $9000 per child. Now that is different, as the Canadian Tire ads say, than the Tory or Liberal Policies of non commitment to affordable public day care.

And in one of those twists of electoral fate, the NDP can thank Scott Reid for keeping day care in the news, with his arrogant remarks yesterday about Beer and Popcorn. Otherwise their announcement today would have been swamped by his party's Health Care Waiting Times Benchmark annoucement. Scott did the NDP a timely favour, another reason his boss will be chewing his ass off.


Also see:

Whose Family Values

Day Care

Defend Public Day Care

Build It And They Will Come

Ah the old arguement of the right wing raises it's anti-feminist, anti-working class, reactionary head again over at Stephen Janke's AGWN blog, namely allow the market to create day care spaces and the folks will flock to them with their new Conservative baby bonus.

Why anti-feminist and anti working class? Because as the arguement goes a womens place is in the home, and that folks only work out of greed, children should come first.

Of course not everyone earns over $100,000 a year which are the only real consumers who can afford the choices of day care or nannies. So parents are forced economically to choose between work and staying home. Its not a choice for them. To rasie their families working class Canadians are forced economically to both work, sometimes having two jobs each. Its only a choice for the middle class who can economically afford to have one of two professionals stay at home.

Any attempt to create a national day care program of course is doomed to fail cause its the state creating impediments to the market says Janke.

No its not actually it is government making day care a priority by promoting it through tax credits and funding. The result is the creation of those spaces that the private sector has failed to do for thirty years. And the program is in place, it was brought in by the last minority government.

Only one company in Canada has created an on the job daycare, CIBC bank. All other such sites are in, horror of horrors, publicly funded institutions, schools, colleges and universities, for students and staff.

If the private sector sees no profit in day care it will not create the spaces. And so far they have done exactly as the market has dictated. There is no money in day care. It is a service. Even with low waged work, and existing subsidies, there is no real profit in it, unless you up the child to worker ratio. Which is done and results in the tradgedies that later get reported in the media as children wander off or get injured or die.

In Alberta which has the largest private for profit day care sector, and has given tax credits for baba babysitting, there are no more day care spaces being created than in areas where the state funds non profit day care. The reality is that actually in the provinces where the state funds non profits more day care spaces are created. And in fact it was after the Liberals announced their funding for non profits in Alberta that more spaces were created. So much for Janke's market model.

And without non-profit day cares, with subsidization, then day care does become only an option for the rich.


I guess the rightwhingnutz like Stephen Janke are preparing their spin on this;

Harper child-care plan hits poor families, council told

Low-income parents in London could lose thousands of dollars each year if Prime Minister Stephen Harper replaces subsidized child care with money to families that most benefits the wealthy, city council was told last night.

Harper's pledge to give families $1,200 for each child under age six has a flip side -- the Conservative government plans to cut short the funding of child-care spaces.

At stake is $13.2 million in funding planned to create and operate 290 child-care spaces through local school boards.

"It's absolutely shocking," councillor and poverty activist Susan Eagle said during a break from a council meeting.

A study by the Caledon Institute of Social Policy shows a couple that together earn $30,000 a year and who now get subsidies worth $3,000 would, under the Harper plan, be left with only $460, because the $1,200 promised would be taxed as a benefit and offset by the loss of other child benefits.

The same study shows a windfall for a couple that has one parent at home and the other earning $100,000. Instead of getting nothing, as is now the case, the couple could keep $1,032 a year as there would be no other benefits to lose and the $1,200 would be taxed at the rate of the stay-at-home parent.

"It's going to be the most vulnerable and the most in need of child care who will receive the smallest benefit," Eagle said.

But wait Temp PM Harpocrite said this during the election:Read His Lips -- No Social Program Cuts

But of course that did not include the existing Liberal promises made to the provinces around day care funding. Once again the clever spin boys in the Conservatives have made it appear that the national day care program implemented under the Liberal NDP budget was NOT a social program.

Canada is what Ed Broadbent calls a mixed economy, and we on the Libertarian Left call state capitalism. Without state subisidization capitalism does not function. Just look a Bombadier, CN, CNR, etc. etc. all these monopolies exist through the financing and subsidation of the state. Non Profit day care needs the same direct support.

What the right wing does not want is day care period. They live in cloud cuckoo land, a fantasy world where mom and dad and baby makes three, where the joyful bourgoise family of the 19th Century raises the children at home.

Except that 19th century family like the wealthy of today had nannies and no need of day care, since they could afford to have one member of the nuclear family stay at home. Not that she did any housework or raised the children that was left to the hired help. She managed the household. The workers whom she managed raised her children, cooked and cleaned for her, they had to raise their children after hours of working for the rich. Like today.


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IN ALBERTA PRIVATE DAY CARE IS HEGEMONIC

Alberta pumps brakes on national childcare program

Sarah Ryan 

GLOBAL NEWS

4/21/2021

Less than 24 hours after Canada's finance minister rolled out what advocates are calling a historic investment in childcare, Alberta's premier says he's not sure it's the right fit for this province.

But Alberta's premier gave the plan a much less glowing review, saying it would only support "urban 9-5 government- and union-run institutional daycare options."

© Getty Images Alberta is expressing multiple concerns with Ottawa's new strategy to reduce childcare costs.

The plan has been widely celebrated by children and family advocates for being forward-thinking and life-changing, particularly for low- and middle-class Canadians.

"This is a really significant investment. It's exciting to see that it looks like it's going to be some permanent funding, really building a system that will be affordable and accessible and high quality for our children and families," explained Jennifer Usher with the Association of Early Childhood Educators of Alberta.

READ MORE: Alberta advocates celebrate federal childcare plan; UCP says more details needed

The Liberals are investing nearly $30 billion in drastically reducing the costs of childcare by 50 per cent in 2022 and down to $10 a day in the next five years.

Documents from the federal budget show the plan will allow an estimated 240,000 parents to enter the workforce.

"Chrystia Freeland was making pretty clear that this is actually going to increase economic growth. She's expecting a 1.2 percent gain in GDP. In other words, it's going to more than make up for what's being invested," explained Lori Williams, an associate professor of policy studies at Mount Royal University, on Tuesday.

Video: Kenney says he won’t be satisfied with ‘Ottawa-style, cookie-cutter’ childcare program

But Alberta's premier gave the plan a much less glowing review, saying it would only support "urban 9-5 government- and union-run institutional daycare options."

Jason Kenney said the plan doesn't account for those who want to stay home to raise their children.   IN ALBERTA CONS SPEND MORE ON BABA CARE /UNLICENSED CARE HOMES THAN DAY CARE

 
"I've never thought it's fair to tax who, for example, make that sacrificial choice, in order to subsidize only one kind of care, which excludes rural families, shift workers and many Indigenous people," he said

The budget documents say the federal government will be "working with provinces and territories to support primarily not-for-profit sector childcare providers to grow quality spaces across the country while ensuring that families in all licensed spaces benefit from more affordable childcare."

Alberta's Finance Minister Travis Toews said the federal money has too many strings attached to it.

"Our concern would be that there's a federal government imposed national childcare system that may leave Alberta parents with very few options," he said.

That's a myth, said Usher.


"It actually increases parental choice because we will see parents be able to choose many more programs because they will be affordable and they will be accessible," Usher said.

Rachel Notley, leader of the Official Opposition NDP, agrees.

"Parents don't have flexibility or choice if they can't have access to affordable, high-quality childcare," she said.

READ MORE: Federal budget delivers big promises on childcare, tamer housing measures

The UCP said it still wants the federal money, though.


"Alberta should simply receive the federal funding, and we can design a program that works and fits for Albertans," Toews said.

Kenney agreed, saying: "If it's a take-it-or-leave-it, Ottawa-style, cookie-cutter program, I don't think that satisfies the demands or expectations of Albertans."

Edmonton Mayor Don Iveson said the province needs to get over itself.

"I think Canadians are not so interested in this sort of jurisdictional square dance over this," he said.

"Mayor Iveson is speaking for a lot of Albertans and probably a lot of Canadians, saying we don't care about what the disputes are between politicians. We care about the very real concerns facing us," Williams added.

She said it could come off as petty politics if Alberta opts out.

"The federal government would go ahead with the provinces that are willing to work with them and that would put additional pressure on the provinces that aren't willing to work with them. People in Alberta will be looking at the other provinces and the benefits that they're getting," she said.

Child Care Not Jobs

That's what the Social Development Minister Diane Finley said on Politics with Don Newman today. "We want to provide child care not jobs".

She was under a lot of pressure from Olivia Chow of the NDP and Carolyn Bennett of the Liberals. Flustered she blurted out the truth. Its not about choice but jobs,that is the Conservatives are opposed to job creation by the State. I am shocked. For them there are two clear cut models of child care, one where children are together supervised by child care workers and the other is where the little woman stays home and takes care of the kids. Thats the Tories real choice for Canadian families.

Stuck with their neo-con ideological blinders on they refuse to see that the private sector does not create child care, it expects the state to do it, in order to shift the burden from the capitalists to the worker/taxpayer. Which is why the provinces and business supported the Liberal plan.

And we know the Tory plan won't create jobs. Cause the Tories have only one plan to give out a baby bonus, which will barely pay for babysitting. Their tax credit plan for business to create day care spaces won't work. Didn't in Ontario under Mike Harris.

But their point is made, they are about choice. Not for working mothers, or for women working in Child Care. Choice for stay at home moms rich enough to afford nannies. For everyone else well leave your kids with baba.

It was ironic that she said this on International Womens Day when Stats Canada identified that Canadian women are still stuck in the pink ghetto, low wages lack of advancement. Like child care workers.Women still paid less, says 10-year study


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Conservatives Vision of Ideal Day Care

The Conservatives took the opportunity to reannounce their Baby Bonus for Baba Babysitting plan again this week. And as only these arrogant dweebs could they did it in a private upper scale day care for the rich. One their models of day care choices that they offer Canadians. If you can't afford this you get a measly $25 bucks a week for baba to babysit.

Yep I can see that $25 bucks really helping out here. His whole day care plan wouldn't pay for one month at this elite daycare. Vote Conservative if you love the rich.

Valerie Nease, the Copper House day-care director, refused to en-dorse Harper's child-care plan and begged off wading into the political debate.

"I can't comment on that ... I'm staying status quo," she said.

The Conservatives requested a visit to the high-end facility where parents with toddlers pay $1,200 a month, pre-school children pay $900 a month for a spot and children who need care before and after school pay $400 per month.

Nease said her day care, which doesn't qualify for any government funds, welcomes 150 children and there is still a waiting list.

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Feminizing the Proletariat

Here is an excellent post on why women are the proletariat, not a special interest group, nor a minority . Nor is womens work in the social factory valued anymore than it is in the home.

Women's work is real work
My recent starting of a job in childcare has got me thinking just how underappreciated and unappreciated childcare work really is. What it all comes down to though, is that childcare has always been the primary responsibility of women. And, as belonging to women, has so been made to be inadequate. Unimportant. Less skilled. Lower. Certainly paid lower on the pay scale of things. But most importantly, deemed of a lower status because it is women’s work - it is not “real” work.

What is mistakenly called the feminization of poverty is in reality the proletarianization of womens work and of women as workers.

The social factory is the extension of womens work in the home and the extension of homework. The fact is as I have posted here before, but it is important to reiteriate, womens work, women workers are seen as and extension of being homeworkers. Home work includes child and elder care. It is not the natural function of women as individuals in society prior to capitalism.

In pre capitalist societies it takes a village to raise a child or care for its elders. It is a social function of the whole community. With the advent of capitalism and the creation of modern urban society a new family unit of the bourgoise was created; the nuclear family. What was once the family unit of the upper classes is now the generalized family unit in modern capitalist society. It is perfect for the needs of capitalism, which is producers no longer working from their homes as artisans, but working as wage slaves and unwaged slaves capable of consuming the goods of fordist production.

Housework and Care of Young Children

Throughout the world women continue to bear primary responsibility for childcare and house-work. This unpaid work remains economically invisible, but creates a foundation for all other economic, political and social life.

At the same time, pregnancy and care for young children impede women’s opportunities for employment. Women today increasingly lack the traditional support of the extended family, in which other family members participated in childcare and children helped with agricultural and domestic chores. Childcare is often a heavy burden on women who work outside the home to support the family. Poverty greatly exacerbates the problem.

The World’s Largest Workplace: Social Reproduction and Wages for Housework

Done-Paid
or
Women's house work - How it should be rewarded?

For a year and a half we have been running in foundation "Taking care of the world" a campaign "DONE-PAID or women's housework - how to reward it". We can see the results of ignoring women's rights: violence against them, poverty, too small participation in public life. We point out the structural cause of these problems: no payment for housework done by women for ages.

Women's economic rights are ignored all over the world. This problem is so difficult that it seems almost impossible to solve it in existing system. But Poland has good tradition in starting changes in what seemed impossible (for instance social movement Solidarność and its leader Lech Wałęsa). Now it is time to take the next step.

In our opinion the key to the problem called "equality" is women's money. A fight for equality hasn't ended yet. First we fought out a right to education, then to work outside home, next electoral rights. Now it's time to fight for our economic rights. It's time to work on new way of thinking and new solutions.

Only when women become financially independent, not by taking on additional responsibilities but by achieving recognition for their housework, such shameful acts as violence against women can be eliminated. Only then social and political activation of women, so desired by international institutions, will be possible. Because without dealing with causes we can't deal with effects.

Sweden

EXTRA PAY FOR HOMEMAKING
It is given to families with children and childless persons between the age of 18 and 29. It consists of two parts: one - for running the home, and another - for children who live in that house. Its amount depends on the size of a household, costs of its keeping and family income.

The extension of womens work into the workplace in jobs such as daycare workers, teachers and nurses leads to it being undervalued and underpaid. And today in Canada the vast majority of women are working.

Not as professionals, eg. lawyers, politicians, doctors, CEO's, etc. but a low paid workers in the service and retail sectors a sector that is not unionized and pays minimum wages or just above. Again the role of women workers in the service industry is an extension of their role at home as the hostess.

When the Conservatives attacked the Liberal daycare funding for the provinces often they focused on the fact that monies were being used to boost the pay for daycare workers, as if this was some sort of waste of money. In fact you can't talk about having daycare spaces for children without the workers to maintain the relationship with those children. Which is exactly the problem with private daycares and the baba as babysitter situations, they often do not have enough workers per child.

And its not just that women earn less than men but that their jobs are undervalued. This is clear in the report issued this morning on the SARS epidemic in Ontario. That workers, mainly women, were injured on the job because their work is not considered as hazardous as mens.

The commissioner lambasted Ontario for its failure to adequately protect the doctors, nurses and other hospital employees in their place of work, noting of all the people who contracted SARS in the province, 72 per cent were infected in a health-care setting, including 169 health-care workers. Two nurses and one doctor died.

''Hospitals are dangerous workplaces, like mines and factories, yet they lack the basic safety culture and workplacesafety systems that have become expected and accepted for many years in Ontario mines and factories and in British Columbia's hospitals,'' Campbell wrote.

''This was a system failure,'' Campbell wrote. ''The lack of preparation against infectious disease, the decline of public health, the failure of systems that should protect nurses and paramedics and others from infection at work - all these declines and failures went on through three successive governments of different political stripes.

The fact this report shows that several years after the SARS outbreak Ontario still has not protected its healthcare workers.

In the same way other working women have experienced the failure of succesive governments and their policemen to protect them from being terrorized and murdered on the streets of our cities by lust murderers. Their work being an extension of the womens role in the bedroom.

Along with sexism racism is the undercurrent in the failure of the State and its cops to do anything about the mass murder in Canada of sex trade workers. Because many sex trade workers are aboriginal women and girls they suffer a modernized form of colonial occupation and domination, that it is ok to rape and abuse them, as has happened in their own communities by the very policemen supposedly there to protect them.

It all comes back to the home. The oppression of women in the home is written on the face of our very uncivil civil society. Only when the proletariat refuses to continue to do housework at home or its extension in capitalist society, the General(ized) Strike, will the exploitation and oppression of women cease.


See

Childcare

Feminism

Proletariat

Women Workers


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Comrade Kate of SDA

Will wonders never cease, the entire Conservative movement in Canada appears to be moving to the Left. First Comrade Harper keeps talking about 'Canadian workers' and 'working families', which is only a hop skip and a jump to him saying 'working class'.

Then Edmonton Centre candidate Laurie Hawn joins Federal Prison Guard Union members in Solidarity Forever.

Now Kate McMillan from Small Dead Animals in her latest blog on CBC quotes Vladimir Illich Lenin. No really. She quotes Comrade Lenin.

Now of course if I quote Comrade Lenin then I get accused of being a Lefty. But if Kate quotes him well..... ok lets put it in context. She really is NOT supporting a return of Red Toryism in the Conservatives she is attacking her favorite bug a boo, socialised day care. Ok and she is attacking socialized health care.

Lets deal with the former first. In her blog she says;

But that anyone would propose that government "knows best" when it comes to early learning and child care is nothing short of frightening.

"Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted." - Vladimir Lenin

Oh that clever Lenin, he surely is responsible for the Liberals and NDP day care policies. I bet they hired him as a disembodied advisor. But wait this quote sounds familar. Hmmm let us google around for a minute and see what we find.....
Oh dear Lenin was paraphrasing that famous Jesuit quote:

"Give me a child for the first seven years, and you may do what you like with him afterwards."

And since this has been the core philosophy of Catholic Education, I wonder if Kate is as frightened of the Church knowing best. Specially since Canada is a Catholic country. Perhaps not by government edict but certainly by census, if not concensus. Of course she doesn't mind Church indoctrination. Like most Blogging Tory's she is all in favour of private delivery of services by the Church. Moral values and all that. But the government funding secular non profit daycares, oh heaven forbid such interference in our individual and family lives.

Instead she makes a straw man out of Lenin, raises the bugaboo of daycare as a communist plot, not unlike the old red scares around flouride back in the early sixties. Except she says nothing at all about education having always been the delivery of ideology by the Church or State.

The only free school movement that has historically existed is not what Kate has in mind. No siree it has been Anarchist, starting with Francisco Ferrer and the Modern School Movement in Spain in opposition to the Catholic Education system in that country.

Early in the summer of 1908, after his release from jail, he wrote the story of the Modern School. The work was entitled The Origins and Ideals of the Modern School and was translated into English by Joseph McCabe and published by the Knickerbocker Press in 1913.

Following the declaration of martial law in 1909 during the Tragic Week, he was arrested and executed without any proof by firing squad at Montjuich Fortress in Barcelona on October 12.

Shortly after his execution, numerous supporters of Ferrer's ideas in the United States formed what were called Modern Schools, or Ferrer Schools, modeled after la Escuela Moderna. The first and most notable Modern School was formed in New York City in 1911.

Coincidental with the anarchist Modern School Movement was the Summerhill Free School movement in Germany which moved to England and influenced the homeschooling movement of the early sixties.

Summerhill: the early days

Summerhill was founded in 1921 in Hellerau, a suburb of Dresden. It was part of an International school called the Neue Schule. There were wonderful facilities there and a lot of enthusiasm, but over the following months Neill became progressively less happy with the school. He felt it was run by idealists – they disapproved of tobacco, foxtrots and cinemas – while he wanted the children to live their own lives. He said:

I am only just realising the absolute freedom of my scheme of Education. I see that all outside compulsion is wrong, that inner compulsion is the only value. And if Mary or David wants to laze about, lazing about is the one thing necessary for their personalities at the moment. Every moment of a healthy child's life is a working moment. A child has no time to sit down and laze. Lazing is abnormal, it is a recovery, and therefore it is necessary when it exists.

Together with Frau Neustatter (later his first wife), Neill moved his school to Sonntagsberg in Austria. The setting was idyllic – a castle on top of a mountain – but the local people, a Catholic community, were hostile.

By 1923 Neill had moved to the town of Lyme Regis in the south of England, to a house called Summerhill where he began with 5 pupils. The school continued there until 1927, when it moved to the present site at Leiston in the county of Suffolk, taking the name of Summerhill with it.

Yep social engineering is what Kate opposes, of course unless its delivered by the private sector as a commodity. Or perhaps by the church through access to public school funds or through religious based home schooling (an extension of Sunday School).

That is what she wants for day care, education and health care. She calls these commodities, at least she is honest about her capitalist apologetics. She wants all this delivered by the private sector. Or in an unregulated fashion, such as Baba babysitting, which is all the Conservative plan pays for.

Where she is not honest is of course her revisionist history of Canada and our social programs. She rely's upon her reading of American right wing propaganda and applying it uncritically to Canada. Lets look at Medicare for instance.

In her same blog item she says this about Medicare.

With the generation who remember life without socialized medicine slowly passing into history, the nation fully indoctrinated with the belief that the words "commodity" and "right" are interchangable, the Liberals have decided to welcome a future voting demographic to the concept that "babysitting" is a government responsiblity.

Oh what generation is that Kate? You obviously missed my blog about how Socialized Medicine Began in Alberta, even before it began in Saskatchewan.

And it was demanded by the ruling classes, the political powers that be, in the medical establishment as well as the government, and it was introduced by a right wing government; Social Credit. It began in the 1940's.

So there has not been a modern generation without Medicare in Canada except your grandparents, when they were children. After WWII every Canadian that came home from the fight for freedom was prepared to fight for social programs, cause when they left home there had been a depression and no social programs and when they returned they were not prepared to settle for less than the current social programs we enjoy. If they hadn't gotten them there would have been a revolution. Which is why Keynsian economics was used to createthe welfare state.

But Kate the historical revisionist denies all this.

Mind you Medicare as it existed in Alberta and Saskatchewan were different then Medicare is today. And different from the private insurance policies that folks in other provinces lived under. And I don't imagine that generation wants to return to that.

Nope they are seniors now and they ain't much in mood to listen to wet behind the ears whippersnappers like Kate tell them that what they consider a right should now be sold back to them as a commodity. Nope. Thats why they vote. And they vote in large numbers. And they vote to keep pensions, medicare, etc. They are the most vocal defenders of the status quo, cause they and their parents fought for it and built this country around those rights that Kate would sell off.

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Beer and Popcorn in Alberta

So all those Conservative parents who think that there should be no state funded day care and damn them they know what is best for their kids, so just gimme my money and I will spend it .

Conservatives got all upset about Scott Reid's election comment on them spending their government baby bonus checks on beer and popcorn.

Making them sound like the stereotypical welfare or AISH recipient that they like to accuse of doing just that, guess if the shoe fits.....

Well here we go lookee here at how all them thar Conservative parents are spending their Ralph Bucks. Not on daycare thats for sure.....

Albertans eager to spend prosperity cheques
CBC Calgary - 3 hours ago
Cash registers were ringing this weekend as Albertans flocked to retailers to spend their $400 provincial resource rebate cheques.
Bucks boost stores Calgary Sun
Business booms as Albertans spend Ralphbucks StarPhoenix
CBC News - Globe and Mail - London Free Press - all 9 related »

But not on beer and popcorn only cause the Brick has a sale with double Ralph Bucks. Yep buy a hide-a-bed on sale with your Ralph Bucks and they will match it. Perfect for when baba stays over to babysit.



Also see: Alberta Surplus

Funny Money Flashback

The Return of Funny Money

Whose Family Values

Day Care

Defend Public Day Care

Harper Lies About Child Care

Conservatives Vision of Ideal Day Care

Go West Liberals,Thar's A Boom Out Thar

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Ralph Klein

 Polish opposition party proposes payments for mothers who return to work

Mothers who return to work after maternity leave would receive state benefits of 1,500 zloty (€320) per month under a policy announced by Donald Tusk, Poland’s main opposition leader. He named the idea “granny payments” (babciowe in Polish) because grandmothers often care for children while mothers work.

“Fifty percent of mothers do not return to work after maternity leave, despite the fact that 92% express such a desire,” said Tusk during a speech yesterday in the city of Częstochowa. “Often they can’t because they have no one to leave their child with or no money for a nursery.”

“I hope this ‘granny payment’ of 1,500 zloty until the child is three years old can give a sense of relief, satisfaction and a sense that someone finally understands the Polish woman who, after giving birth, after the first months of upbringing [the child], wants to return to work,” he added

“A woman in Poland wants to have a choice,” continued Tusk, leader of the centrist Civic Platform (PO), Poland’s largest opposition party. “She doesn’t want the authorities, the church, her husband, or a prosecutor to decide how her life should look.”

Explaining why he had called it a “granny payment”, Tusk said that, while a woman could use the money for a nursery or preschool, “she can also share it with the proverbial, symbolic grandmother”.

His announcement follows a speech on Monday at which Tusk declared that women’s rights is the “number one issue” in Poland under a conservative government that has overseen the introduction of a near-total abortion ban, restrictions on the availability of morning-after pills, and ended state funding for IVF.

Tusk’s latest proposal has, however, elicited criticism from other parts of Poland’s opposition, especially figures from the left, who argue that it does not solve the problem that not enough childcare is available.

“In two thirds of districts there are no places in childcare for children under three and 1,500 [zloty] for grandma doesn’t solve the problem,” tweeted Magda Biejat, one of the leader of the Left Together (Lewica Razem) party.

“We need a nursery in every district, encouraging the taking of paternity leave, and fighting against discrimination of women in the labour market,” she added.

Meanwhile, a government minister argued that Tusk was proposing to introduce something that already exists.

“What Donald Tusk thought up has already been functioning for a year,” tweeted Barbara Socha, the deputy family and social policy minister, pointing out that the government’s Family Care Capital (RKO) programme and “500 plus” child benefit scheme already together provide 1,500 zloty per month.

Some commentators pointed out, however, the RKO programme is only available from the second child onwards. Tusk’s proposal also appears to be an additional payment on top of existing benefits.

Socha also noted the government has improved pension conditions for grandmothers and lowered the retirement age for women by seven years from what Tusk’s previous PO government introduced. “That’s seven more years for time with the grandchildren,” she wrote.

Poland’s current government, led by the national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS), has made boosting social programmes, in particular for families and the elderly, a cornerstone of its time in power.

However, despite a declared aim for such payments to boost Poland’s birthrate – which is one of the lowest in the European Union – the number of children being born in Poland has continued to decline, last year reaching its lowest level since the Second World War.

According to Eurostat data from 2018, the employment rate among women in Poland aged 20-64 was 65%, slightly below the EU-wide figure of 67%.

Main image credit: S O C I A L . C U T/Unsplash 

Daniel Tilles  is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta  Prawna.

MAR 24, 2023 

SEE

BABA CARE  

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: The ABC's of Privatizing Daycare