Red Cedar
More apocalypse, less angst
A little rant about daycare, and women and work.
I’m a bit stunned that in this day and age in Canada, the Minister of Human Resources would go on record as saying that people pushing for a national daycare program are people who don’t want to have to raise their own kids. Moreover, the notion that $100 a month buys parents a choice between staying at home and raising their own kids or putting them in childcare is bizarre. When the average daycare cost per child in BC is $700 per month (and I think that’s a bargain price because I know people who have paid much more) – it’s laughable for the government to go on record claiming that $100 towards that gives anyone a choice about anything.
The reality is – Minister Finley – most families would love to have reduced working hours to spend more time with each other and less time in transit/work and daycare situations – but the reality is that Canadians do not have high incomes and in almost all cases require two parents to work to make ends meet. For those women and men in single-parenting situations there is no choice at all and your $100 per month does little to offset the stress that these families find themselves under.
Seventy percent of Canadian women with children have them in daycare and early childhood education – almost none of which is publicly run or funded even though countless studies show that the demand is there and that a public option is safer and cheaper than the patchwork of inadequate and substandard facilities that make up much of what parents are forced to choose as daycare for their children.
As far as I see it – there are two choices here
- Ante up for a functional, national and public childcare system (like Quebec’s $7 per day spots) or
- Guarantee a family living wage whether one or two parents are working that allows for one or both adults to stay home full or part time at a dignified level of income until their children are school age.
I’m pretty sure that the 1st option is going to turn out to be easier to administer and cheaper to fund than the 2nd.
I mean, that’s if you want to support families in Canada instead of browbeating, denigrating and generally misrepresenting working people who are raising kids at the same time. As far as I can tell the Conservatives mainly want women out of the workforce but not on welfare (heavens no!), while at the same time claiming the need to expand the foreign worker program because there aren’t enough “Canadians” to do the work that needs to be done. Which added up all together makes no sense. None. And these folks are running the country? I hope not for much longer.
And one other thing – Daycare is not a women’s issue. Daycare is a family and a social issue that needs to be taken seriously by all parties. Women are not secondary in the workforce or in our family economies any longer – many of us are the sole or larger income earners as our economic base has changed from resource/labour to knowledge/social work. I know. I know – it’s so much easier to marginalize an issue when you make it one of our *female problems* but it’s not an honest reflection of where we are at socially to keep treating children like they only belong to women and women like they belong in the home. *Sigh*
February is turning into Fabric Month!
I’ve got four cooking and gardening books in the pile for review right now – all of them really exciting titles when I get down to posting them here – I promise! But at the moment, I’m a little obsessed with fabric instead – and February is turning out to be a *great* fabric month. First of all, B. bought me a bunch of really nice designer fabrics (at left) – three of which are already incorporated in projects: The skulls have been made into market bags, the tattoo fabric (which you can barely see at the end) has been made into a bread bag and a kitchen laundry bag, and the amy butler turquoise second from right is going to become an overnight bag in very short order. The other fabrics are still up for grabs until I decide what to do with him. After this gift, B. gave me another fabric gift (which I haven’t photographed) including a bunch of small pieces and fat quarters from Spoonflower.
On top of that – DressSew is having a 50% off everything sale for their 50th anniversary which afforded me a whole lot of interfacing, lining fabric and a few more designer cottons I would normally not have bought except they were so cheap. $150 of stuff set me back about $82 with tax – which is a really nice stash addition for not too much money. Plus I got the lining to make Jenny’s diaper bag which is on my next projects list.
And if that wasn’t all enough, my mother has promised me a shopping trip to Satin Moon in Victoria as a birthday present this month (and possibly some other fabric/textile shops as well). That’s all high-end stuff for quilting and they have an amazing selection of supplies! By the end of all this, I will certainly be awash in lots of amazing project fabrics…. just in time for – gardening season!
But that’s okay, because right now it’s all small one-off projects to build my skills and having some nice material to work with sure makes it a lot more enjoyable. I’m super glad I learned how to use interfacing in a workshop last year as well, that is turning out to give me a lot more project options. Next up after the three projects I’ve got on the go are done? Zippers I think. I’m going to learn how to install zippers for this cute little amy butler zipper bag set I’ve just bought some fabric for today. Ah. Litte distractions. Photos and book reviews to come soon!
Hopped up and ready to go.
I am feeling ridiculously hopped up at the moment, which I suspect is the result of the steroids prescribed to me by the dentist to help keep my mouth swelling down. Which is kind of nice – because I feel so eager to get things done, but on the other hand I’m a little distracted by how many things I could be doing all at once. Not to mention the slightly queasy feeling I’ve got going on which is a result of said steroids. I’ve got two more of them to take and then I’m done with them – which I think is for the best really – as I’ve just taken on tons of work in the last two days and I’m pretty sure these pills are also to blame for that!
So what’s on the go right now? I’ve just found out that the union wants me back in Ottawa at the end of the month for a couple of days, in which case I’m going ahead with scheduling a work meeting and a friend has invited me for dinner one night as well – making the whole thing more palatable. Additionally, since I’m trying to engineer some money flowing down to my unit from the almighty headquarters, having a bit of a face to face with the higher-ups is probably a good thing right now. Yesterday, I managed to sell some people on a whole new web strategy for one of our major information products and promised to write up a project plan in the next week for kicking around. Not to mention an agreement I made during a union-management consult yesterday to research a whole new communications in conflict-type course which I think would be really beneficial to pilot in my workplace (see my earlier post – Not Everything is Harassment if you want any explanation on that one). I’ve also got a great idea for a community grant proposal that I want to write up by next Wednesday and have agreed to leaflet 300 houses for an upcoming movie night. Oh, and my bees are coming soon and I’ve got to get their damned hive built pronto!
Problem is that even once these damned steroids have worn off I’m still going to have to do all these things, and without nearly as much energy. It’s a little daunting at the moment – but really, in an era of cut-backs (and I’m pretty sure bad ones are coming) it’s just so much better to be busy and make sure the whole work unit is too! And that busy fuels all the other stuff in my outside-of-work life.
There’s fun stuff coming up as well though – an overnight trip to Lummi Island in March, a ten-day roadtrip to Death Valley for some hiking in April, a 5-day sojourn to spend time with the folks at a rental house on the Oregon Coast in June, and some talk of heading back up to Cathedral Lakes for a camping/hiking trip in July. Oh – and NYC in October, which is aways off but we’re booking our tickets with Aeroplan points so we have to do it now.
I’m a little too spinny at the moment for any kind of a cogent post, but I suspect the mellower me will return within 48 hours. In the meantime, I’ve got a lot of things I should be working on!
Communication democracy now!
Emerging in the last week in the two dramatically different contexts of Canada and Egypt – is that citizens globally are addressing communication technologies as a fundamental right, cel phones and the Internet and particular. More broadly, communication technology is seen here as the key facilitator for free speech – for what good is free speech if no one can hear you?
Which has always been the criticism levied at a corporately-owned media with no accountability and no oversight – and the call for a democratically-centered media in the form of public radio/tv, university journalism, and grassroots presses – none of which by definition could have the reach of the corporate players if only because of the lack of access to resources.
But I think that both the CRTC decision to allow for excessive billing by Internet providers, and the decision by Mubarak to cut off Internet and cel phone communications point out the inherent weakness in relying on anything other than our physical selves to create zones of freedom. Which doesn’t mean to go luddite in our organizing of course…. but to be prepared and recognize our Achilles heel for what it is. Which means keep building our lines of real world connection and communication. Our face-to-face meetings, our neighbour potlucks, our marches in the streets that pick stragglers up along the way.
It turns out that nowhere in our Charter of Rights and Freedoms are Canadians promised affordable Internet, nor accessible cel phone networks – and I’m pretty sure no citizen in the world does either. Perhaps now is the time we start agitating for the People’s Communication Charter?
Nothing to see here…..
I had more dental work this morning – involving a small surgery and two permanent crowns (oh and some Diazepam because I wasn’t going into a bone-cutting exercise without something Valium-like). Because of the extra drugs, B. had to bring me home and while he was waiting for me he managed to get himself a teeth-cleaning and check-up. Apparently my dental office is super-eager to book people as soon as they walk in the door.
I’m feeling a bit medicalized these days as I am also pursuing regular chiropractic appointments for a shoulder injury (that happened last year, but is apparently all connected to when I broke my ankle in 2005 because that’s just how these things work). Between the massage, chiro and dentist, I’ve had six appointments in 2011 already!
Suffice to say, all this extra medical attention is making me feel old before my time. On the other hand, being able to attend to things now (yay insurance!) means that actually getting older will be less complicated by things that could have been taken care of when I was young.
And herein lies my confusion at the lack of socialized medicine in the US, and the lack of socialized dentistry in both Canada and the US, not to mention the terrible cuts to BC medical care over the last decade that have removed services like chiro and massage and proper vision care from our free benefit. Because, really, we all know that being able to walk into an office and get treatment without paying means that we will actually take care of health issues as they come up – and that means that we are less costly as old people because we don’t have problems compounded over decades to deal with.
And not only that, it means that as workers we are more productive because we aren’t side-tracked by pain, limited mobility, mental health stumbles and other sufferings that are easily treated when they first manifest (but not so easily treated when left to fester for years). So it really costs less to give people more. Which I suppose is what makes me a socialist isn’t it?
All I can say about any of it is that I have the best medical and dental insurance one can have in Canada above my basic state-sponsored medical – and the kind of treatments I can get should be what everyone receives by sheer dint of being a citizen (or landed at least).
Red Cedar 