Peter Shawn Taylor, December 30, 2016 If it wasn’t so tasty, would anyone bother with beef? Last year, the World Health Organization added processed beef and other red meats to its list of level-one carcinogens, alongside such deadly substances as tobacco smoke,...
Make the scofflaws pay. And if they won’t pay, punish ’em. There’s an understandable lack of public sympathy for deadbeats such as parents who skip out on family support payments or drivers who rack up huge parking ticket fines. And one of the...
As every mom or dad knows, infants travelling by car must be firmly strapped into a government-tested, properly installed (and often maddeningly complicated) car seat. Failure on this account can earn you a hefty fine and demerit points. Flying with your kids, on the other hand, is a whole other matter.
Waterloo is the latest North American city to opt for a light rail transit system, but many Canadian cities are likely to follow. Funding from upper levels of government leads municipal politicians to believe that LRT is a bargain, but municipal taxpayers are left holding the bag for inevitable cost overruns.
For the past 14 years, Vancouver surgeon Dr. Brian Day has led the charge for health-care reform, pushing for the right of patients to pay for private care if their health and well-being are threatened as a result of waiting in a stagnant and overburdened public...
The path to net zero, based on the much disputed belief that carbon dioxide is a pollution, is more steep and impractical than most people realize. Replacing fossil fuels with clean electricity will require much more power generation and a greatly upgraded grid to...
Putting Canada at the bottom of the list for housing poor children is absurd. As with all statistical arguments, understanding the UNICEF report requires a careful eye and a healthy dose of skepticism. The study focuses on relative differences; that is, the gap between children in the middle of the income distribution and the average below that line. Exclusively relying on relative indicators is a highly contentious, and generally misleading, way to examine poverty. The UNICEF report is no exception.
Over 170 U.S. charities have programs to match social assistance families with cheap but reliable cars–but this practice is rare in Canada.
New Frontier Centre study recommends provinces drop restrictions on automobile ownership for Canadians on income assistance.
Given equal access to government funding, nimble entrepreneurs are more likely to open new spaces quicker and more cheaply than non-profit operations saddled with volunteer boards of directors. If you want more daycare spaces, let entrepreneurs do their thing.
If Manitoba is committed to meeting its goal of 6,500 new daycare spaces by 2013, it should stop discriminating against for-profit daycare operators. Commercial child care should be an important part of any provincial daycare system.
Provincial child care policies vary widely across the Prairies. In particular, Saskatchewan and Manitoba actively discourage for-profit child care centres by denying them access to government subsidies and grants. Alberta treats both for-profit and non-profit centres equally. Because of these policies, Saskatchewan has just one commercial daycare in the entire province. Only five percent of the child care centres in Manitoba are for-profit. Alberta has a majority of for-profit centres. Saskatchewan also has the lowest level of child care coverage in the country. Manitoba and Alberta are both near the national average. Evidence suggests that Alberta has been better able to meet rising demand for new child care spaces than either Saskatchewan or Manitoba. Further evidence suggests that Alberta is more efficient in turning government funding into new daycare spaces. Alberta is able to create twice as many spots per $1,000 in government expenditure than Manitoba, and three-times as many spots as Saskatchewan.
If Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall is committed to meeting his goal of 1,000 new daycare spaces, he should stop discriminating against for-profit daycare operators. Commercial child care centres should be an important part of any provincial daycare system.
If the goal is to open new licensed daycare spaces in a short period of time, the best solution is to enlist the capabilities of the for-profit child care sector. Because it treats both sectors equally, Alberta has been better at opening new spaces – at a lower cost to taxpayers – than Saskatchewan or Manitoba.
An examination of the current state of child day care policy in the prairie provinces.