A few days ago, the Liberal-led Quebec government passed legislature in the National Assembly threatening to remove publicly funded daycare for any day care in the province.
The public outcry has been very encouraging from my perspective. I've heard radio shows and read newspaper columns about it. Mind you - its been all but ignored by the big daily newspapers. Fortunately, the National and local dailies no longer have the power to change public opinion the way they had in the past. Now, with the internet - social media as well as radio/television, opinions flow like the wind, and keeping something either hush-hush or trying to propagandize is very difficult.
This law is plain wrong. Not only does it contradict the Canadian and Quebec Charters, but its another abuse of our free-will and yet another example of how the government feels they can run our lives better than we can.
The law states that even if the day-care is a religious instruction day-care, or if they show any religious symbols or teach/speak about religion, they can lose their funding. Everything religious about day care has to be neutral in order to receive the funding. IOn other words, the day-care can put up a Christmas tree - as long as they call it a 'holiday' tree, and as long as they don't put an angel or a star on the top or hang any religious ornaments.
This legislation is wrong on so many levels, its hard to even ponder the meaning. Not only are they trying to remove religion from day-cares, but they are trying to 'dumb-down' any additional religious beliefs.
Their claim is that parents should be teaching religion at home and not in a publicly funded environment. This same ideology has been encroaching on our school system. A publicly funded centre of learning... just not learning about religions!
At the same time, they are encouraging both parents to go to work or find full-time jobs. Go figure!!!
Lets look at the life of a typical 3 year-old with 2 working parents - shall we? And lets also look at the root cause of this day-care reliance at the same time.
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Parents and little ones get up in the morning, and if your worlds are anything like mine (used to be), there is a rush to the washroom, then onto the dining room for breakfast, rush to get ready for school/work/day-care and then off we go - Breathe NOW.
Drive and drop off youngling at day-care, fight traffic get to work, spend about 8 hours at employment location, (breathe for the second time) .... Get off work - somewhat aggravated, fight traffic, get home close to dinner time. Depending on the better-half's work schedule, either run to day-care and pick up the youngster, or help with dinner if the kiddo is at home.
Next we gather around the dining room table, discuss the day and life in general, eat our meals, clean up and it's 7:00 pm. There's still time to do some yard-work or shovel the driveway (depending on season) and get laundry started. But now it's time for little one(s) to have a bath and get ready for bed. bath-time is done, chores are being completed - and its bedtime for the little monster - you put them to bed, and take about 10 minutes to read to them about the bible and Jesus. Sometime during that 10 minutes, the little one fell asleep ... but you didn't notice cause you were sleeping too!
At most - these young people are getting a few minutes of religious information/education a day at home - this is the current environment our government and the pursuit of wealth has created.
Now in my case, I have 4 boys aged about 3 years apart from each other. Luckily my wife hasn't had to work much during their formative years, so we didn't need day-care - they received their religious instruction at home or in school. And my guys are adults now, so I'm hoping I taught them well enough that they have good morals and a decent religious foundation.
But in today's economy, if only one parent is working, there is little left over for savings between pay-cheques and the day or two before pay-day can be tense! The National and Quebec government responded to (or created) this mess by offering a subsidy for day-care to working parents. It costs 7$ a day to qualified parents, the rest is paid to the day-care by the government.
So - if you fully understand the Quebec day-care environment, you can clearly see how reliant people have become on it. And the more people rely on something, the easier they can be controlled or - at the bare minimum - told what to do.
The thing that gets to me is that this is just the next step in removing religion and free-thinking from our society in general. First - religion was taken from the federal and provincial and then municipal legislatures, then from public institutions, then from schools and community locations, now from day-cares.
In Quebec - history (from a Quebec perspective) is taught at schools and it differs greatly from the rest of Canada. Quebec aims at encouraging artistic pursuits, while most of the rest of Canada pushes towards a scientific knowledge gain. This is evident by the studies offered by community colleges on two sides of the river. Just trying finding a course at Heritage College offering training in such trades as engineering, mathematics, anything scientific!
Apart from the obvious religious perception - the most basic desire of humanity 'the thirst for knowledge and understanding' is slowly being erased. Lets face it - the world and our entire society revolves around religion and history. From the very date we follow (2011 years after the birth of Christ), to our holiday's (Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, Ramadan), to our base laws (the ten commandments), to our unions (weddings) and our very end - death - all of these things and much much more revolve around religious beliefs or events. So - in essence - this government is removing a part of history and our heritage.
The government claims they do not want to fund religion with public money! Yet this statement is put out there to accommodate those in agreement or appease those who will rail against the oppressor. They are funding day-care, not what goes on in the day-care. They are not paying extra funds to the day-care providers or companies for educational purposes. They are not funding them for providing physical exercise, education or anything else. Simply - the government is subsidizing day-cares to provide meals, lodging, warmth and the daily requirements for early child-care... not knowledge, not physical education, not religious education.
Whether the day-care provides educational training or not, religious training or not, physical training or not, they are given the same amount of subsidy. If a day-care offers to feed the kids and then have them sit in the same room for 6 hours watching TV with a lunch and bathroom break they are subsidized. On the other hand if the same day-care all-of-a-sudden takes several trips to the park, feeds the kids 100% nutritious meals, has educational or fun outings to museums etc, they are funded the same amount.
If a parent chooses to send their child to a religious-based day-care they should be subsidized as much as any other. What the early-childhood care-givers do while our children are in their care is 'our' choice.
This is just another step towards making our society neutral in every way. Gender neutral, religious neutral, cultural neutral. We are fast being herded towards a non-thinking, 100% reliant society where governments and large powerful corporations can tell us how to think and act.
I suggest people in Quebec write their MPP's as soon as possible about this and attempt to have this legislature overturned regardless of whether you have children in day-care or not. This really isn't about day-care, its about freedom and the freedom to think and act for ourselves.
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