Families are given bread crumbs

Personal Note before you start Beverley Smith's article.

I am sorry I have not been blogging much, I have had a personal loss and it is taken me time to get over it.
During this time I have noticed that Harper gave income splitting to families with children under 6 and only on the $100 a month.

To me that is an utter joke!

Families are paying the brunt of the tax debt right now, families are paying almost double in taxes if one is childcaring their own child..... and this government has stated we are allowed to income split on $1,200 a year.......

UTTER JOKE!






Beverley Smith: Women and families once again take back seat in federal budget

By Beverley Smith

How often in history have women been told to take a back seat, just for now, and “we’re sure you understand”?

The federal budget is like that. It banks on the good will of the self-effacing to yet again be ignored. While reducing corporate tax and considering jobs the solution to all things economic, it waltzes over children and the elderly with that cute little token pat on the shoulders.

Views on federal budget

Libby Davies: Ideology wins out over good sense in 2010 federal budget

Bill Robinson: Military spending in the federal budget: Up is down?

Elizabeth May: Stephen Harper budget worsens ecological, fiscal, democratic deficits

Ujjal Dosanjh: Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s deficit of hope

Seniors across the country, over two million strong, had been clamoring for an urgent pension summit. Instead they get a Seniors Day and to wave a little flag nationally on April 9’s Vimy Ridge Day. The latter will celebrate men in the war—not women, not unpaid work, but fighting and some time ago. Today’s plight, poverty, will be ignored.

Parents have been asking for a birth bonus as in Australia, for income splitting as in the U.S. and France, for pensions for caregivers as in Italy. They got none of those.

The push to grant universal maternity benefits was not heard either. Even though the greying population puts all budgets in tail spins and we need babies, there is no recognition of the costs of raising a family. The push to have funding flow to the handicapped or dying person needing care was silenced yet again.

We have a replay of old announcements telling us yet again that we get $100 a month till the child is six.

We get tinkering around the edges, not new benefits, not more benefits, but administrivia. Parents who share custody can now share the child tax benefit. It’s not more. It’s just shared now. Military families that qualify for parental leave don’t get more of it, but can simply take it later if one of them has to go to war. Single mothers get no more than before but they can say the child earned it so their tax is slightly reduced.

Big deal.

Instead of returning funding to national advocacy groups for women, to legal action funds, the big rights push of this budget was semantic—to change one word of the national anthem. Hold your hats, for a day or two, it looked like they might change “all thy sons” to “all of us”. Well, that would sure pay the bills and recognize our unpaid work.

They are going to dole out more streams of red tape all the while saying they will reduce it. They will ensure families “have the information they need to make informed choices”. They will “launch a national strategy on childhood injury prevention”. They will look to “innovative charities to partner on new approaches”. Look for those brochures soon in a building near you. Not one dollar to help people but lots more advice.

They will protect children from Internet luring all the while preventing parents from spending more time with the kids. They will ensure youth criminal justice has harsh punishment all the while keeping parents busy in another building earning.

The funding for children will not be “effective, swift and true” but the long arm of criminal justice will be.

They will protect us with more screening on airplanes, a new biometric passport, and will launch a cyber-security strategy, but they won’t help families be there to offer hands-on protection of the sick, handicapped, elderly, or dying. Big Brother will do it.

Yes, this budget took a long time to recalibrate. After all, when you are shooting at families you need sophisticated weapons.

Beverley Smith is a long-time women’s and children’s rights activist, homemaker, and teacher in Calgary who made a successful appeal at the United Nations in 1997 that Canada’s tax, pension, and child-care laws discriminate against some care styles. She currently edits an international newsletter on caregiving.

Pedophile in Ottawa area walked away from RO

“If there are any odds of him being in Toronto, then Toronto should know. His actions are concerning and dangerous.” — Staff-Sgt. John McGetrick, Ottawa Police

TORONTO - Back in the mid-90s, Eldon James Hardy, a criminally insane pedophile, was one of 11 inmates at the Penetanguishene Mental Health Centre to share a $45,000 out-of-court settlement for the “inconvenience” they suffered during a three-day lockdown by their guards.

In their statement of claim, which originally sought $370,000 in damages, they bitched about cold food, being unable to take showers, being restricted from attending their occupational therapy classes, and being barred from the recreational facilities.

But, rather than suffer through a long and expensive court case, the guards’ union cut their losses and settled out of court.

Today Eldon James Hardy, now 64, is back in the news once again, having purportedly walked away, for at least the second time, from the Royal Ottawa Hospital, forcing Ottawa Police to issue a press release warning the public in both Ottawa and Toronto of him being on the lam since last Friday.

“Would I consider him dangerous? Absolutely,” said Staff-Sgt. John McGetrick, head of Ottawa’s sexual-assault unit. “If he is in Toronto, then Toronto should be made aware of it.

Chandigarh, Feb 18 : The Haryana government has announced that its women employees can take leave for two years for child care.

The special leave to women employees can be availed by them anytime and in spells during their entire service, a state government spokesman said here Thursday.

“The Haryana government has decided to allow child care leave (CCL) to women government employees to take care of their children at the time of need, whether for rearing or to look after any of their needs like examination, sickness etc,” the spokesman added.

The CCL leave account will be maintained in a proforma and kept in the service book of the concerned employee, he added.

Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda said that the CCL may be granted for a maximum period of two years (730 days) during the entire service towomen government employees for taking care of her two eldest surviving children below the age of 18 years.

Like in case of earned leave, Saturdays and Sundays will be counted as part of the CCL.

Hooda said that the CCL can be combined with any other leave due to the women employees.

No CCL would be given for the third or subsequent child, irrespective of age.



Personal note:

Just in case you are wondering, Haryana is HERE.

This is not just a 'maternity' leave like we know in Canada, this is a leave whenever the child is in need of a parent.

Something like this would do well in Canada.
Sharon Ruth has been fighting for years along with Gord Brown MP of Leeds Grenville to pass a bill allowing parents of sick children to receive EI. As it stands now EI will not give benefits to parents with children who have cancer or any other form of disease. EI can be thoughtful and tell the parent to go to a Dr. and get personal sick leave. We all know parents would lie, cheat, steal or even kill to save their children, but do we really have to?

Haryana is in a 3rd world country and if they can do something like this, then why can't we?

Feb 7th Roy Green show on IGGY"S Daycare

Roy Green had Sara Landriault, President of the International Family Childcare Association (me) and you're favorite blogger!


Go HERE to hear Roy Greens broadcast.












Roy Green

100% non profit daycare in canada are high risk for the children

Ontario child care cut hits poor kids, results in 6,400 job losses
Monday, February 8, 2010

A pending $63.5 million cut to Ontario’s child care programs would eliminate thousands of jobs and leave 7,600 children from low income families without child care.

The Centre for Spatial Economics crunched the numbers on the impact of the provincial government eliminating $63.5 million that supports child care fee subsidies for single and low-income parents. The Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care (OCBCC) who commissioned the study is tabling it at the province’s budget hearings today and will be available for comment at 10:30 a.m. outside Rm. 151, Queen’s Park.

“The report shows there’s a lot more at stake than lost child care spaces,” says OCBCC Coordinator Andrea Calver. “A $63.5 million cut to subsidized child care would result in a $148.3 million drop in Ontario’s GDP through job losses and increased demand for welfare. The losses far outweigh Ontario’s contribution for child care subsidies that are a lifeline for vulnerable children and their families.”


Personal note:


How does anyone decide if you are low income or not? I would like to see the books to see if the centers did need to be closed or not. There should be an open forum on this whole issue, with the right calculations and how many children are actually effected.
I would rather not see centers close down, but this is only happening to the non-profit sector, not the private.


Seems to me making Canada a 100% non-profit daycare area, is a high risk to the children!

Gods rule or kidnapping?

The Associated Press

Date: Fri. Feb. 5 2010 6:19 AM ET

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Ten Baptist missionaries are facing kidnapping charges in Haiti for trying to take 33 children out of the country, and the lawyer for all the defendants is putting the blame on the group's leader.

Attorney Edwin Coq said Laura Silsby knew the group couldn't remove the youngsters without proper paperwork, while he characterized the other nine missionaries as unknowingly being caught up in actions they didn't understand.

Read more go HERE

But at least two-thirds of the children involved in the case, ranging in age from 2 to 12, have parents, although the parents of some told The Associated Press they gave them up willingly because the missionaries promised the children a better life.


Personal Note:

They may have believed it was the right thing to do, but from this side of the world it sure as hell sounds like kidnapping to me.

The parents gave up the children willingly to give them a better life, therefore the baptist group coerced the parents by offering the kids candy (more or less).
Did the Baptist group not even try to include the parents, or was the self righteous attitude just to take the children?

There are many orphans in Haiti, and I feel for every one of them but jumping the gun trying to adopt them or take them out of the country when they still have family alive is not a move of compassion or heroism.

It is called stealing children.

Ignatieff wants to give choice in childcare, but not to you.

Child care is 'No. 1 social priority': Ignatieff
Norma Greenaway, Canwest News Service: Monday, February 1, 2010
In this file photo, child-care worker Floyd Arcand reads to kids in the head-start program at the Alexander First Nation.
In this file photo, child-care worker Floyd Arcand reads to kids in the head-start program at the Alexander First Nation.
Photo Credit: Bruce Edwards, Edmonton Journal


OTTAWA — A federal Liberal government will not let the ballooning deficit get in the way of implementing a national early learning and child-care program, Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff vowed Monday.

"I am not going to allow the deficit discussion to shut down discussion in this country about social justice," Ignatieff told reporters on Parliament Hill. "We will find the money because it seems to me an excellent investment."

He described a national early learning system as a way to give young people an "equal start" in life and also the "best anti-poverty program" on offer.

Read it on Global News: Child care is 'No. 1 social priority': Ignatieff



Personal note:

Just one question to Ignatieff,

I do not want to put my kids in daycare, and I cannot afford to stay home. Where is my choice?