Adam Currie is paying close attention to the parties' platforms in the lead-up to the federal election. Having moved here from South Africa six years ago, he became a Canadian citizen in 2014, and it's the first time he'll cast a ballot in his new home.
It will also be the first election in which he's zeroing in on each party's promises for families. He and his wife welcomed a baby boy four months ago and are already exasperated by the search for childcare that will be needed when his wife returns to work.
"The experience has been somewhat daunting," Currie wrote in an email to The Tri-City News, noting they "seem to be on an endless chain of waiting lists" and hoping for a call.
Being a one-car family compounds the challenge, Currie added, as they search for a quality facility that is easily accessible on public transportation and relatively affordable. The cost of the daycare that is just steps away from their home is about $500 above other facilities in the area, Currie said — about $1,700 per month.
"I can't see how it is realistic to expect new families to pay high child care costs while also grappling with record-high property prices and mortgages," Currie said.
NDP candidate Sara Norman said it's a refrain she's hearing regularly on the doorsteps of the Coquitlam-Port Coquitlam riding.
"A lot of families I'm talking to pay upwards of $2,000 a month in childcare costs," she told The Tri-City News. "It's crippling for a lot of families."
That's why the NDP is proposing a strategy that promises $15-per-day childcare and a million new spaces over eight years; the federal government would pick up 60% of the costs while the provinces and territories pick up the remainder, a plan estimated to cost $5 billion annually once fully implemented.
Norman said a 2% increase to the corporate tax rate would help fund the plan, along with the return of parents to the work force who would further stimulate the economy.
The Liberals' strategy focuses more on refining tax benefits than providing childcare spaces.
"I think it's essential," Liberal candidate Ron McKinnon said of investing in early childhood programs. "It's going to help us invigorate the economy… It will help people not yet in the middle class become members of the middle class — single parents, for example, who can't afford to go out and work will be able to find quality daycare they can afford… while still working."
Under a Justin Trudeau government, he said, parents would receive a yearly tax-free, income-adjusted child benefit — a combination of four existing Conservative benefits into one larger payout, McKinnon said.
But it's not the only facet of the Liberals' social infrastructure platform, McKinnon said. The family income-splitting program would be scrapped and the TFSA contribution limits reverted back to $5,500 — two Conservative programs that McKinnon says do little to nothing for the vast majority of Canadians — but cost the government $3 billion in lost revenue.
"We're going to save that and put it back into the economy, we'll put it into things like child benefits," McKinnon said, noting the Liberals are targeting the middle class. "It's the backbone of our country, it has the greatest impact on our economy."
Conservative candidate Douglas Horne said his party has given families a choice when it comes to family expenses and has offered programs such as the taxable Universal Child Care Benefit, childcare expense deductions and the arts and fitness tax credit to help offset costs.
But a nation-wide subsidized system isn't the cards, he says, because it would require provincial buy-in that he doesn't see happening, adding such a program would be too costly and voters want to keep taxes low.
"I think it's unfair to mislead the public… When they don't have agreement from the other partners to do that," he explained, noting the family income-splitting program also helps two-parent families where one stays at home.
Green Party candidate Brad Nickason believes the low-tax refrain is simply a slogan, and one that doesn't play out the way voters think it does.
"If you're a single mom trying to take care of your kids in Port Coquitlam and the only place you can get a job is in Surrey, you now have to pay to go over a bridge," Nickason said of the new Port Mann. "That's a tax — and that's not a low tax. That's $1,000 a year to go back and forth to work."
The Greens say that a $160 monthly cheque doesn't even begin to cover the cost of childcare, particularly in Greater Vancouver, and are promising to restore the 2005 agreement between Ottawa and the provinces for universal daycare in addition to other policies directed at children.
Meanwhile, the Currie family is struggling with a decision many other Tri-City families are also facing: what to do when it's time for his wife to return to work.
"Once my wife returns to work and you deduct daycare costs, along with transport costs into the city… it leaves a scenario whereby we question whether it is indeed worth her even returning to work," Currie said. "Leading up to my first federal election in which I am eligible to vote, I will be paying close attention to the parties' stances on affordable childcare across the country."
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