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Daycare:
Harper and the minority Conservative government have decided that the best form of daycare assistance that Canadians can get is 100$/month for every preschool age child. Let’s say I’m a single woman with a child of two. Now let’s say I have to work to support that child. 100$/month is going to afford me a teenage babysitter once a week if I’m lucky. And even if 100$/month was enough to cover daycare costs, or even a decent chunk of the daycare costs, my child would have to wait upwards of two-three years to get a spot in a daycare facility. Canada currently has enough daycare slots for about 1/4 of the kids. Fabulous. Now let’s say my child is seven and I’m still working to support that child. He/she goes to school from 8 until 3pm. What do you think the odds are of me getting a job that allows me to be home before 3pm? And now I don’t even get the 100$ to laugh at. Sigh.
Environment and Transit:
Harper and the minority Conservative government have devised a “made-in-Canada” solution to environmental issues. Instead of channeling money into useful environmental initiatives, Harper has decided to give Canadians who purchase monthly bus passes and so on an income tax credit which amounts to about 150$/year. Wow. There’s some incentive to ride the bus eh? A monthly bus pass, monthly, in Toronto will run you over 100$. Yeesh.
That’s my morning rant.
ezmy writes 
>The key thing that we learn from this is… don’t have babies.
>Oh come now! Harper has graciously provided things that people should have taken into account when they had kids/decided to be born.You have a child, you understand the consequences of such an action, you pay for darcare.You decide to be born, you recognize you have to get places, you should be able to afford getting there.
>Dana, Rivers:You have valid points. The problem I have with all of this is that this knob is doing what Bush does… Pretends to do one thing while knowingly doing another.In these cases he is pretending to help but is actually making things worse… and I propose that it’s not by accident.There is validity in the argument that you should promote responsible parenting (in this sense), but if you’re going to promote that, be up front about it.On social and environmental issues (and other issues), the guy is a conservative in liberal clothing.So, I don’t agree with Angela either; Harper does get it… he just doesn’t want a segment of the population to get it.
>hi, my name is david, and i’m not very good at picking up on sarcasm, apparently. :P
>David; Quite alright. Coming from me, that response is TOTALLY ambiguous. :)
>Don’t have babies unless you’re independently wealthy.