The child-care plan proposed by the Liberals got a boost today.
An Environics Research poll suggests 50 per cent of Canadians prefer the national day-care program proposed by the former government.
In comparison, 35 per cent said they favour the Conservative government's plan to give parents of children under the age of six $1,200 a year.
The poll was commissioned by the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada.
Martha Friendly, a researcher with the University of Toronto, said some of those polled indicated they wanted both plans. However, when asked to pick one or the other, half of respondents favoured the Liberal plan.
"If you look through the whole poll, it really does show that across the spectrum, across the country, across gender, across rural and urban, people really do support a government role in child care and really do value it," she told CTV's Canada AM.
She said that even among Conservative voters, a third of them supported the other system.
"So what we're seeing is that child care has really become a mainstream value, people value it."
One of the main problems cited by respondents about the Conservative plan was that the $100 a month to parents may not be spent on child care.
"It's money to parents, a family allowance, a good thing, income, but not necessarily child care," Friendly said.
In addition to cash for parents, the Conservatives have pledged to create 125,000 new daycare spaces by offering $250 million in tax credits for businesses and non-profit groups that create new spaces.
The Liberal plan promised the provinces $5 billion in transfer payments over five years to create new day-care spaces. Before losing power, the former government signed up all 10 provinces, with Ontario, Manitoba and Quebec signing five-year agreements.
It doesn't seem likely that the Conservatives will restore the Liberal plan.
"We campaigned on that,'' Social Development Minister Diane Finley said in May. "Canadians chose us with that full knowledge. And now we're going to make that happen.''
The Environics Research survey was conducted between May 5-10. Just over 2,000 Canadians were contacted by telephone.
The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.2 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
Meanwhile, the child-care debate heated up during question period on Thursday.
Interim Liberal Leader Bill Graham charged that Canadians are beginning to see through the Conservative's child-care plan.
"Supporters of the payments-without-places approach must be alarmed at the newest trend. Cash-strapped daycare providers are eating up the government's payouts ... they'll soon learn that the prime minister's payment plan works out to less than $4 a day after taxes," Graham said.
"Can the prime minister or even his numerically nimble finance minister explain to Canadians that the Conservative plan will cost families more money and still give them fewer spaces to choose from?"
Prime Minister Stephen Harper was quick to rise to the challenge by pointing out the Liberals supported the Tory budget.
"Our plan will give some money whereas their plan gave no money and our plan will create spaces whereas they created no spaces," he said.
