Friday, April 28, 2006

Dryden against democracy?

Another Liberal wants to be leader of the opposition for at least the next 5 years and he has already gotten off to a great Liberal start.

Today he said:

"I'm running because the day after election day I was mad. For 18 months we had worked on something that mattered -- a national system of early learning and child care. And then it was gone."

He than goes on to talk about the CPC policy and adds this gem: "Calling it 'universal' is a debasement of the language."... "It is a fundamental misuse of language," he said, referring to the Prime Minister Stephen Harper's election pledge to give parents $1,200 a year per child under age six.

Ok let me get this straight, your 'national system', which is not a system of anything besides giving money away to the provinces in a hodgepodge of seperate unequal and un-uniform deals where to my knowledge no additional child care spaces have yet to be created, was an honest use of language?

Maybe to a Liberal it does make sense, but to Canadians who voted your party and its so called national system out of office it was clear. Go ahead and be mad at democracy and the Canadian voter, but I do not think that it is the best strategy for a politician to insult the system and the voters that he will need to get elected.

Oh by the way, the CPC plan is called choice in childcare and it is universal in that the money promised will go to the parent/s of ALL children under the age of six. That is 100% of the children under 6, not just for the 25% of the 54% of parents that use public daycare. The money will not go into general revenue of a province, to unions, to lobby groups, or anywhere else that the money from your 'national system' would end up at the whim of the provinces.

edit: can anyone give me a link or quote where anyone in the CPC used "universal" to describe the choice in childcare program? I think Mr. Dryden is playing loose with the facts on this.
-----------------
Update: ht to William in the comments section.

I stand corrected on the usage of the word universal as I questioned in the above edit.

I still disagree with Mr. Dryden's opinion about the word usage, as the term 'universal' would apply better to the CPC plan than the Liberal ideas, but we each have our own opinions.

1 comment:

Ardvark said...

Thank you for the link.