A promise that was never going to be kept

I said a year and a half ago in the halcyon days of April '06 that the Harper promise to create 125,000 new childcare spaces was a knowing lie. Conservative commentors were shocked, shocked at my cynicism.

Now here we are. The government admits that the promise won't be kept and the experts in the field shrug and say, yeah, their 'private investment' plan was never going to produce the spaces they said it would - it failed in the Harris government in Ontario and it was always going to fail federally.

They knew this. They can't claim it's come as a surprise.

So all over Canada, thousands of childcare spaces that would have existed under the Martin Liberal plan - flawed, insufficient, a desperate last minute plan to avoid well earned electoral annihilation, but at least a plan - do not exist. Parents that could have used those spaces as part of the task of increasing their household's economic stability, maybe even clawing their way above the poverty mark, are getting a piddling $25 a week and getting taxed even on that.

And the Conservatives who made a promise they knew wouldn't be kept shrug their shoulders and say 'whaddaya gonna do?'