Right in the centre - Take the personalities out of it all

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Published on Thursday, July 23, 2015

By Ken Waddell 

The Neepawa Banner

I hear a lot of criticism of our governments at all levels. Criticizing the government is a privilege we have in this country, one to be protected. However, we need to make sure we are dealing with truth and not just colouring our criticism with personal based nastiness. It seems that our prime minister, Mr. Harper generates some personal based criticism, often evidenced by phrases like “I don’t like Harper” or “We have to stop Harper.”

Why do people say such things? The reason is quite simple, Harper does what he said he was going to do.

The most recent example is the Universal Child Care Benefit whereby families receive monthly payments to help them with child rearing costs. The liberals and those further left on the political spectrum say it’s buying votes and are making all kinds of rude noises about the program. They want a universal day care program with licensed, regulated day cares. 

There are many great day cares in Canada, both private and public, both regulated and not regulated. However the UCCB gives parents a wider range of choices, they can place a child in day care, if it’s needed or if it’s available. Or they can use the money so a parent might be able to stay home with their kids. Apparently, staying home and raising kids is not a good option if you are liberal or further left. To those on the political spectrum opposite of conservatives, it seems that kids have to be in day care or they won’t be socialized or educated or raised properly. What utter nonsense.

With UCCB, parents have a choice of options.

Day cares aren’t always available, especially in rural areas. In the cities, they may be scarce but in rural areas, they may be non-existent. The UCCB gives parents a bit of help to find options for day care. That option may be mom or dad, grandma or auntie or the neighbour’s son or daughter. There are always options, maybe not enough options but there are always options.

Just the other day, I thought of one option for farmers. Maybe a farm family only needs day care in seeding or harvest season. With the UCCB, they could save up the money and hire a neighbour to look after the kids while mom and dad are running the air seeder or the combine.

It aways amazes me how restrictive some people want to be with other people’s lives. If the extreme proponents of publicly funded, government controlled and subsidized day care  had their way, all kids would be in day care. It’s utter foolishness, but that’s what they say they want. They don’t want people to have options. They get livid when the prime minister says the best form of day care is called mom or dad. 

Our children and grandchildren were not in day care. My wife and my daughter-in-law stayed home. A day care proponent recently said on Facebook that mine was a family of privilege who made nothing. That got me angry as my wife and I made something. You are reading it, it’s called a community newspaper. Currently, we employ eight full time people and some part-time. Three of our grandchildren have jobs in their community (not working for us) and one of those is still in school. Two have graduated and two are well on their way to graduating. Their dad has worked hard and any privilege our family has, has been earned. My wife and I have invested huge amounts of money in our business so we can have the “privilege” of earning a lot less money than some people employed in education or health care or many other government jobs. And by the way, I am still working well past the usual retirement age and not complaining about it either.

If I had one wish to extend to Canadians, it is that they would debate politics based on facts and not on personalities.