Ontario has bought into the federal government’s “Ten Dollars a day” daycare deal. That is what everyone calls it. And most people realize it is not going to happen overnight. What puzzles me though is this payment going to be in 2022- ten dollars or in 2027-ten dollars?
The way inflation is galloping along, it is very hard to say what a Canadian ten-dollar bill will be worth in five years.
It was good to see that finance minister Chystia Freeland knows that we are not going to be able to train a quarter million new daycare workers overnight. And, obviously, there will need to be a lot more daycare centres. These need to be built, staffed and in operation to serve the needs. And feel assured, if we build them, the kids will come.
Maybe the question of value will be solved if Pierre Poilievre wins the lottery being run by the conservatives to choose a new leader. As conservative leader, he seems to want to campaign on making Bitcoin the Canadian currency. We would probably need to keep our phone batteries charged, in that event. I checked and saw that a bitcoin was being quoted at over C$54,000. You would never want to make a decimal point error in Mr. Poilievre’s world.
What worries me though is that there are obviously going to be many daycare spaces in different daycares. They are not all going to be cookie-cutter daycares. Will not some of these daycares be more desirable than others? Will there not be extras? Is there a surcharge for chocolate milk instead of two-percent? Is having junior in this daycare over that daycare going to be more prestigious? Will there be some where the drop-off and pick-up is more convenient? You never really know what junior or his parents will prefer.
I do not want to be a skeptic but there will be many cookie-cutter daycares and there will also be the innovators. And that is life. And if you don’t think lots of operators will find ways to get around the limit of ten bucks, you do not know human nature.
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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry
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