By Hayley Ferguson

UCP candidate Barnes comments on child care

Mar 28, 2019 | 5:01 PM

Medicine Hat, AB – A major issue this election across the province and here in Medicine Hat is finding affordable and quality child care.

Both the NDP and Alberta Party have released their prospective child care plans while the UCP have stayed quiet so far with their stance.

At the start of the campaign, Alberta Party leader Stephan Mandel promised to create a billion-dollar voucher system and tax credits to offset child care costs.

On Monday, Rachel Notley announced that her government would expand their existing pilot project of $25-a-day daycare to 13,000 additional spaces if they stayed in power.

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Local UCP incumbent Drew Barnes thinks that these types of plans will only put the province into more unnecessary debt.

“Currently, the economy is so bad that even the NDP admit that of the 108,000 spaces that they put forward, only 85,000 are being occupied right now.” Barnes said. “So in the United Conservative Party we’re going to stay focused on the economy. Free enterprise, pipelines, and families. And we’ll improve space now by getting rid of unnecessary bureaucracy. And when we have the opportunity to, when the time is right, we will absolutely treat all families equally”

The NDP believes that lower child care costs will bring more women into the work force. According to Statistics Canada, Alberta ranks second-lowest out of all the provinces for labour-force participation among women with children younger than 6 years old.