Canadian Politics Today

Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin had put in place the beginnings of a national child-care program on the eve of his political downfall. Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who won the contest, promptly scrapped it, a multi-billion-dollar mistake based on what we know now about the relationship between subsidized daycare and labour participation rates.

Only about 81 per cent of women 15 years of age and over were working or looking for work at the end of Harper’s decade-long tenure, about the same as when he took power. The rate for men was about 91 per cent, also unchanged. The gap represents hundreds of thousands of people who could have been helping to generate wealth, but weren’t, sometimes by choice, but probably more often because daycare was too expensive.