Canada's New Government sucks. I'm not going to comment on their ridiculous insistence on calling themselves "Canada's New Government" and how they're trying hard to prove that absolute power corrupts absolutely after painting themselves as saints while, I guess you'd call it, Canada's Old Government got fried for the sponsorship scandal. I'm not even going to comment on my relief that Bush's invasion of Iraq has gone so poorly that Canada's New Government has forgotten that it would have sent our troops in too if they were in power at the time. I am going to discuss Canada's New Government's Universal Child Care Benefits program.
Now, one would assume "Universal" means that everyone can get it. One would be wrong. Yesterday, Ying and I found out that she didn't qualify due to residence restrictions. Now, I do have some beefs about some of the stories Ying brought back from her English class about all the free programs and cash given to "skilled" immigrants who don't seem very skilled at all. We were also dismayed because of the big push to get people into other courses to help immigrants but we would only run into dead ends as these programs were outrageously expensive. I earn enough money to prevent the organization from hitting up the government for the obscene amount of money required to attend. With all these stories in my head, I am glad you cannot arrive in Canada with a brood and start collecting Stephen Harper's pittance right away. However, I fail to see why Julie fails to bring in the cash for Ying and me. Since Canada's New Government is doing their best to force women back into the kitchen, we had to apply for the Universal Child Care Benefit under Ying's name since she's the primary care-giver. In the obtuse set of documents I filled out in order to collect the benefit, there were questions about Ying's residency and a bureaucrat's dream team of confusing questions if you couldn't just check the "applicant born in Canada box." We were refused and so I called Service Canada to get some answers.
My first call was answered by a machine which told me, "all our operators are busy so phone back later." My second call got through to a bitter, angry Quebecois woman who was determined to do her best to thwart me and ruin my day as well. She was not going to discuss my case at all since Ying was on title. She didn't even want to see if Ying has given me permission to handle tax and other bureaucratic topics on her behalf. I did trap the woman though. Since Ying was denied money due to residency and the woman wouldn't tell me why, I asked her what are the residency requirements. Simple question for one who's paid to answer questions about the Universal Child Care Benefit. She told me she didn't know and put me on hold. I assume she went on to other calls and was hoping I would go away. Since my New Government helper wasn't interested in helping me, I knew I should hang up and fight the Man some other way.
And I am going to fight the Man. I am going to get my Harper pittance. It's only $100 every month but it's Harper's crappy program and I'm going to take advantage. Even though that $100 doesn't pay for 20% of what child care will cost and even though you need to register your child for a day care space one year before the baby is born in order to get in when maternity leave runs out, I will fight to get my pittance.
If only more voters had small children, Stephen Harper would soon be able to call himself Canada's New Opposition. But then I'd have to wait another thirteen years for the Liberals to get their day care strategy underway.
