God Keep Our Land Glorious and Baby-Free

Finally, we have some conservatives who truly and deeply believe in environmental conservation. Some cynics have chosen to view Gordon Campbell's and Stephen Harper's recent conversions to environmentalism as nothing but greenwash façades slapped over policies which continue to favour energy extraction over conservation. To these cynics, I say -- how else do you explain why both politicians have made child care more expensive and harder to obtain?

People cause global warming, so what better way to slow population growth in Canada than to reduce access to child care? Forget access to the morning-after pill. Prohibitively expensive child care discourages people with remarkable effectiveness. And in Canada, since about 70 per cent of couples are dual earners (and would therefore likely need childcare, should they have children), the provincial and federal governments have found a sure-fire way to reduce our carbon footprints.

Take, for instance, the B.C. Liberals' recent decision to cut funding to Child Care Resource and Referral (CCRR) programs across the province, even while maintaining a large budget surplus. On the occasion of 2007's International Women's Day, I feel it's time to recognize these decisions for what they are: part of a principled stand for the environment, which just happen to have negative impacts on women and children.

Working to earn $53 billion

"But wait," you ask, "what about the $100 a month that Harper's government has given to parents?'" Well, whether Vancouver parents spend the money on beer, popcorn or some small fraction of a trip to Whistler, there's one thing they definitely aren't doing with it: buying a month of child care. Why? Because a month of full-time childcare costs about $900 in the Vancouver area. Often more.

That is, if you can find a place for your child, which you probably can't. Waiting times for spaces are now approaching two years at many childcare centres -- meaning that hopeful couples must place their not-yet-conceived child on waiting lists a few months before conception to secure a place for when the up-to-one-year of parental leave is up. And that's if they're lucky enough to be one of the dwindling number of Canadians who are not self-employed, and hence have access to the EI parental leave program.

Yes, we finally have politicians who put principles above economic growth. The Canadian Council on Social Development estimates that working mothers contribute about $53 billion a year to Canadian GDP. But our current leaders are not even willing to change policy over a little thing like 53 billion dollars.

Why should they? It's not like the government has to pay the real costs of bad policy. As matters stand, working women bear the bulk of the costs of having children. And I'm not talking about the act of childbirth, but about the wages that working women give up when they take time off to raise their children or move to part-time work. This doesn't just affect them when they have babies. Working mothers end up paying less into pensions and RRSPs than they otherwise would, and so they have less money after retirement.

The price of staying home

A study published a few years ago in the academic journal Population found that in Britain in 1998 -- where women already received a child-care allowance significantly more generous than Canadian women receive -- an average working mother with two children gave up about a quarter of a million pounds (just over half a million Canadian dollars) over the course of her career in lost income. Half a million dollars. And this isn't talking about people with above-average salaries, either; these figures apply to a woman who leaves an average job to have children. Not only that, the average working mother receives a pension that's about 35 per cent lower than she would have if she never had any children. And these costs are even higher for lower-skilled women who are more likely to drop out of the labour force for good.

No doubt in some people's worlds this doesn't matter. Some still believe that women rely on men financially, and that they'll continue to do so after retirement. But in addition to the fact that many women and men no longer always have traditional financial relationships, about one in every three marriages currently ends in divorce. So as it stands, childcare policy in British Columbia sends a clear message to working women -- don't have babies if you aren't rich or willing to be very poor.

Green guys

Some might say this policy is anti-women, anti-poor people and anti-child. But I think this ignores the policy's subtle genius. Finally, we have a conservative policy that is pro-environment.

Despite Mr. Harper's outward ambivalence about Kyoto, no doubt the prime minister is aware that per capita Canadians consume more greenhouse gases than virtually anyone else in the world. Fewer Canadians means less greenhouse gases.

And while Gordon Campbell pretends to disregard climate change in his plans to twin the Port Mann Bridge (something that everyone who is not a cabinet minister in the Liberal government seems to agree will lead to more traffic congestion, and more greenhouse gas emissions), no doubt he, too, has his sights on negative population growth that will finally cure the traffic problem in Vancouver, once and for all.

Related Tyee stories:

• Our Home and Infertile Land
• Get Real about Child Care
• Mother's Helpers Nervously navigating today's patchwork of childcare.