NDP Children’s Services Rakhi Pancholi issued the following statement in response to the UCP’s announcement of the Working Parent Benefit:

“Today’s announcement of a one-time payment to some parents may help this month, but it will do nothing for the next. Parents need affordable child care every month, not just when the UCP has a budget to sell.

“Since the pandemic began, I have been asking Minister Schulz to account for the unspent money in her child care Budget, and to invest it in quality, affordable, accessible childcare for Alberta families. Instead, they have been sitting on unspent dollars for almost a year. This is an embarrassingly ineffective way to address the crisis in child care. 

“The economic imperative in this moment is to get Albertans back to work. No parent is going to be able to return to work or school based on half a month’s worth of child care fees. 

“We know that providing universal, accessible, affordable child care, like our $25-dollar-per-day program, is the infrastructure that gets families back to work. It is the single most effective thing we can do to jump-start our economy now and promote long-term economic growth into the future.”