A Lifesite news story by Gudrun Schultz, reporting on a survey commissioned by the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada, says four out of five of Canadians think it's better for children to have one parent at home.

That's exactly the goal of a child-care policy advocated by the CHP for more than a decade.

The CHP policy would give families with children a tax credit of $1,000 a month if either parent chose to stay home and raise their own children.

Indeed, right after the 1997 federal election, in a column by then-publisher William Thorsell, the Globe and Mail outlined such a plan, stating that it's "what Canada needs"—but without informing readers that the CHP had already produced such a plan as part of its platform; and, indeed, had already been advocating the idea for almost two years!

Lifesite reports: "In a poll conducted by GPC Research (now Fleishman-Hillard Canada) of over 2000 Canadians, 77.9 percent of respondents said they would prefer to have one parent stay at home with their children.

"The percentage of Canadians in favour of one stay-at-home parent remained high across differences of gender, education, income, marital status, age or regional location. Regardless of differing factors, Canadians consistently rated a stay-at-home parent as the first choice in childcare."

A California newspaper's study of Quebec's universal daycare plan (which was the model for the Liberal Party's policy) revealed that it costs taxpayers $15,000 a year per daycare space, yet has the highest ratio of unregulated daycare in the country.

Clearly, most Canadians recognize that parent-care—what the CHP has proposed and still advocates—is the best care for children.

Of course, the CHP's 'Family-Friendly Tax Credit' doesn't provide for all child-care needs—for example, it doesn't meet for the needs of single-parent families—but no one program can meet every need. However, it would open up many of the better daycare spaces for families in which parents either cannot, or do not choose to, have one parent home. It would certainly end waiting-lists.

And because the CHP plan would strengthen families and give children the best kind of care—parent-care—its benefits would be felt for generations in reduced social and family disorders. And since it would open about two million jobs of working parents who choose to stay home, the money saved by reducing unemployment would more than offset lost tax revenues.

It's a win-win-win—especially for children and families.