Monday, December 05, 2005

The Nasty Nanny State

As I don't have children myself, and the fact that I once was a child isn't enough of a qualification, I don't think I can pass judgment on the long-term financial benefits of Stephen Harper's proposed $1,200 annual child care allowance.

But giving parents more financial freedom to choose, instead of forcing them to support Ken Dryden's $5 billion boondoggle, has got to be the better way for people who believe that parents, and not the state, know best how to raise their pre-school children.

To quote The Interim :

If Ottawa was attuned to the desires and needs of families, it would develop programs to make it easier for a mother or father to stay home and raise children and to stop punishing (through the tax system) parents who make the sacrifice to do just that. Instead, for ideological reasons – a mindless egalitarianism that seeks to turn women into wombless clones of men – Ottawa is committed to expanding daycare.

To do that, to encourage women to abandon their families by entering the workforce, a national, tax-funded daycare scheme is necessary. If women want to work and find a trustworthy source of care for their children, so be it. But for the state to encourage it is altogether another matter.

A cynic might even see a reason for the state’s interest in breaking the ties of children and parents. If the trend to redefining morality is to continue, then why not begin indoctrination at the earliest possible stage? Why wait until a child is six, nine or 15, when you can begin when he or she is two or three years old? Can the task of imparting “Canadian values” be left to parents alone?


When critics denounce Harper for ideas such as this and income splitting to lower the tax burden on families, it is not a mere question of finances they are arguing.

They are arguing for the state to arrogate all power for raising and educating children away from their parents, to create a future society of mindless drones beholden to the ideology of the governing classes.

The current practice in North Korea of raising children in state-run nurseries to worship Kim Jong Il has more supporters than you might think within the Liberal Party and NDP.

No comments: