Tory premiers should prod Poilievre to keep child-care deals, minister says

The federal government signed deals with every province and territory that would see child-care fees cut in half within the year and to an average of $10 a day within five years.

Provincial conservative premiers touting $10-a-day child-care deals with Ottawa is a welcome move, even if some of the leaders now campaigning on the deals were among the last to sign them, federal Liberal Families Minister Karina Gould said.

Now she says they need to push federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre to explain if he would keep the agreements in place.

“They should probably be prodding their federal counterpart at the Conservative Party of Canada as to what their position is.”

Between July 2021 and March 2022, the federal government signed deals with every province and territory that would see child-care fees cut in half within the year and to an average of $10 a day within five years. The 2021 budget earmarked $30 billion over five years for the plan.

Poilievre has not committed to honour the agreements. During the last election, the Conservatives under then-leader Erin O’Toole campaigned on a promise to respect the deals _ not all of which were yet signed – only for one year. After that, the Conservatives said the program would be phased out in favour of a tax credit targeting low-income families.

Several premiers have used or are using the deals in their re-election bids, including United Conservative Party Leader Danielle Smith in Alberta, a province expected to enter a campaign any day now.

In December 2021, before becoming premier, Smith wrote an op-ed in the Calgary Herald calling the child-care deal just signed with Ottawa by her predecessor, Jason Kenney, a failure of conservatism. She said then that the money would be better left in the hands of parents to decide directly how to spend it.

“In practice, it’s given total control to Ottawa over how we deliver child care,” she wrote.