"Non-profit" _unionized_ daycare is what the NDP is interested in. If Quebec is anything to judge by, cutting off a benefit to over-privledged upper-middle class people primarly in the public service, is unlikely to lose the CPC any votes.

Hold that thought tight as a lot depends on you being right. Of course, the upper-middle class parent does not qualify for the subsidized place but depends on others poorer off qualifying to ensure the daycare and all its places exists at all. But hold your thought tight and that 100 bucks a month that will create and therefore get the family needing daycare nothing in itself.

There's a lot at stake in creating dependency on the government, because dependency is a path to power.

And Tory-nomics dictates that the rules of supply and demand must bow to social re-engineering and a shift in "dependency by benefit" to the right sort of voter.

...and just to ensure you are forewarned, my mood is too fine today to be dissuaded by the NuEconomics as I have had a breakfast which includes a food the units of which are called "rashers".

Yeah? Well I had about 14 rum & cokes last night.

The Tory plan was both tactical and keeping within their ideology -- if there's going to be Federal sponsored a child care plan, then it's going to be one that benefits all Canadian parents, not just the select few.

While it is keeping up with the ideology, it is better to describe it as not going to benefit all parents rather than not benefiting a few. As the equal distribution of funds creates no places (unless the cost of running a daycare should drop to 1/8th by magic - the expectation of magic being a classic torynomics principle) it will after all be a fund to pay for Friday nights. Invest it in popcorn stocks. <p>Or, as you might prefer, Captain Morgan black. While I am large and rather toughened to such things, 14 rum & cokes would hospitalize me. Well done.

Ooooph! 14 Rum and cokes! My stomach rebels at the thought! Surely you jest, DJ?

I don't think so though there's a certain element of bluriness to the whole thing. I was drinking Morgan White, though my favorite quaffing rum these days is Mount Gay, a lovely amber.

A good evening, all in all.

Fixed election dates? Isn't that totally against the spirit of Parliamentary democracy?

...just checking.

Interesting to note another possible compromise to be foisted on our new rural overlords:<blockquote class="smalltext">Ewatski, chief of the Winnipeg Police Service, stopped short of saying the association would now lobby the Tories to keep the registry. But he made it clear the chiefs still see value in the initiative. Ewatski said statistics show police officers electronically query the registry about 2,000 times a day, which can, for instance, help them determine whether guns are in a house they are about to enter. "We take the approach in policing that information is the lifeblood of our work," he said. "And the more information our front-line officers have on the streets to do their job, the better prepared they are to deal with situations of public safety as well as officer safety.</blockquote>

What is delightful about the current Tory position is that they are able to argue that the Liberal plan would have provided places for, at most, 1/8 of the potentially eligible kids. The $1200.00 per kid per year plan will buy the beer, popcorn, coats and occassional babysitting for the rest of us.

What the Tory plan actually does is say that a particular federal government pie will be divided equally as between eligible receipient and it leaves it up to the parents what they will do with the money. This is both fairer and potentially far more popular as it includes stay at home parents who would not have qualified for the "Every eighth child" Liberal program.

Yes, the fairness of no daycare provided for and people who do not need the support getting their chance at the trough. It should be very popular indeed as such schemes are.