A friend of mine describes Stephen Harper as a “tactician” as distinct from a visionary.

A case in point would be his “child care” program.

It promises a $1,200 a year payment to parents with children under the age of six. It’s estimated there are more than 2 million children under the age of six in Canada so annual cost of the program will be at least $2.4 billion.

If one examines Mr. Harper’s speeeches and newspaper articles over the last few years, one might have called him a reactionary, at the very least a right wing ideologue who worshipped at the alter of American republicanism and subscribed to the notion of western separatisim.

Remember the time he wrote to Ralph Klein prior to the 2004 election. Here’some of what he had to say then.

“Withdraw from the Canada Pension Plan to create an Alberta Pension Plan offering the same benefits at lower cost while giving Alberta control over the investment fund. If Quebec can do it, why not Alberta?... Collect our own revenue from personal income tax… Resume provincial responsibility for health-care policy. If Ottawa objects, fight in the courts”. This is our Prime Minister.

Here’s what he thinks about healthcare.

"What we clearly need is experimentation with market reforms and private delivery options [in health care]." Stephen Harper, then President of the NCC, 2001. "It's past time the feds scrapped the Canada Health Act."- Stephen Harper, then Vice-President of the National Citizens Coalition, 1997.

His love of Canada is displayed proudly on his sleeve but something else escapes his mouth.

"Canada is a Northern European welfare state in the worst sense of the term, and very proud of it….I was asked to speak about Canadian politics. It may not be true, but it's legendary that if you're like all Americans, you know almost nothing except for your own country. Which makes you probably knowledgeable about one more country than most Canadians….[Y]our country [the USA], and particularly your conservative movement, is a light and an inspiration to people in this country and across the world." - Conservative leader Stephen Harper, then vice-president of the National Citizens Coalition, in a June 1997 Montreal meeting of the Council for National Policy, a right-wing American think tank.

The Conservatives so called child care policy may be good politics because it puts money in some people’s pockets but the program is bad public policy and it’s not a child care program. Do the math.

• Assume a family received $1,000 after tax from the program.
• Assume a child needs day care 250 days a year. $1,000 would work out to $4.00 a day and that won’t buy anybody a baby-sitting service for more than an hour.
• That’s the economic equation.

Earlier this week, Quebec pediatrician, Jean-Francois Chicoine, the Doctor Phil of Quebec television unleashed a 520 page bombshell that says “too many parents parachute their kids into daycare at far too young an age”.

In Quebec, there are some 51,000 kids, under the age of two in Quebec daycare centres. Some of them are there for 52 weeks a year about 60 hours a week. Dr. Chicoine argues that the best place for kids under two is with their parents.

He says that “at this time, it’s very important for a baby to get a lot of affection and form a sense of security”. He says that between the age of eight and eighteen months, babies learn to trust people other than their primary caregivers but no more than five of them at a time.

“In daycare, a baby will encounter an average of 17 different caregivers.... During the summer it’s five or six a day”. Intuitively, one would have to agree with him. Ironically, the people who rely most on daycare are the ones at greatest risk – blue collar families who work long hours and struggle to get by on two little incomes.

In an earlier column, I mentioned that in the last federal election, the Government of Canada signed five year agreements with all ten provinces that would see the investment of $1 billion a year in early learning and childcare. Under these agreements, the provinces would invest the federal money in regulated, early learning and childcare programs for children under the age of six. The principle requirement was that investments meet the test of quality, universality, accessibility and development.

If Dr. Chicoine is right, he opens a new daycare debate and drives a wedge between the Conservatives and the Liberals. The Conservatives would sacrifice the needs of children to the ideology of choice.

The Liberals will need to rethink their early learning philosophy, at least in terms of when it should start outside of the home. Parents will have to balance their economic choices with the best interests of their children.

To compound the problem, Prime Minister Harper is now daring the Opposition in parliament to defeat his minority government over the daycare allowance. That may be fair in politics as are his efforts to enlist socially conservative groups to help sell his program but he crosses the line when he portrays those who believe the money would be better spent on the creation of new daycare spaces as “pie in the sky academics and researchers”.

The issue is not about “day care” in the sense of nine to five baby-sitting. It’s about the proper care of infants and toddlers, first by their parents and then by trained supervised professionals.

Researchers have already established the link between early childhood learning and success in later life. Access to quality daycare, is no longer considered a luxury in Canadian society. It has become a right for working parents and their children.

More importantly, their children are Canada’s future. A $1200 a year childcare allowance will not contribute much to that future.

Atlantic Insight is a published Blog inventory of opinion articles published weekly in New Brunswick's print media as written by W.E. (Bill) Belliveau, who is a resident of Shediac, New Brunswick, and business owner operating his Moncton-based marketing consultancy, Bell Strategic.