¹ There has been considerable discussion concerning the appropriate label for the cluster of ideas associated with these challenges, which have been referred to variously as “the new right agenda,” “neo-liberalism” and “neo-conservatism.” The latter term has been adopted here, since it captures both the departures from classic conservatism and the persistence of social traditionalism that are intertwined in contemporary conservative ideology. For a discussion of this issue see Gollner, Andrew B. and Salée, Daniel, “A Turn to the Right? Canada in the Post-Trudeau Era,” in Gollner, Andrew B. and Salée, Daniel, eds., Canada under Mulroney: An End-of-Term Report (Montreal: Véhicule Press, 1988), 14–17.Google Scholar

² See, for example, Eisenstein, Zillah R., Feminism and Sexual Equality: Crisis in Liberal America (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1984)Google Scholar; Peele, Gillian, Revival and Reaction: The Right in Contemporary America (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984)Google Scholar; Gollner, and Salée, , eds., Canada under MulroneyGoogle Scholar; and Nevitte, Neil and Gibbins, Roger, “Neoconservatism: Canadian Variations on an Ideological Theme?” Canadian Public Policy 10 (1984), 384–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³ See, for example, Gunn, Simon, Revolution of the Right: Europe's New Conservatives (London: Pluto Press, 1989)Google Scholar, and Krieger, Joel, Reagan, Thatcher and the Politics of Decline (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986)Google Scholar. There are a number of chapters which adopt a comparative perspective in Cooper, Barry, Kornberg, Allan and Mishler, William, eds., The Resurgence of Conservatism in Anglo-American Democracies (Durham: Duke University Press, 1988)Google Scholar, and Levitas, Ruth, ed., The Ideology of the New Right (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986).Google Scholar

⁴ There is, for example, no chapter on child care or family policy in Heidenheimer, Arnold J., Heclo, Hugh and Adams, Carolyn Teich, Comparative Public Policy: The Politics of Social Choice in America, Europe, and Japan (3rd ed.; New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990)Google Scholar. In geographic terms, scholars more often pursue a Sweden/US or Sweden/Britain comparison than one which includes the Canadian case. See, for example, Bridgeland, William M., Smith, Philip R. and Duane, Edward A., “Child Care Policy Arenas: A Comparison Between Sweden and the United States,” International Journal of Comparative Sociology 26 (1985), 35–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Borchorst, Anette, “Political Motherhood and Child Care Policies: A Comparative Approach to Britain and Scandinavia,” in Clare Ungerson, ed., Gender and Caring: Work and Welfare in Britain and Scandinavia (London: Harvester/Wheatsheaf), 160–78Google Scholar; and the concluding discussion in Lewis, Jane and Åström, Gertrude, “Equality, Difference, and State Welfare: Labor Market and Family Policies in Sweden,” Feminist Studies 18 (1992), 59–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵ For example, March, James G. and Olsen, Johan P., Rediscovering institutions: The Organizational Basis of Politics (New York: The Free Press, 1989)Google Scholar, and Weir, Margaret, Orloff, Ann Shola and Skocpol, Theda, eds., The Politics of Social Policy in the United States (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988)Google Scholar. Previous research suggests that both institutions and ideology have influenced policy regarding the regulation of child care services. See Teghtsoonian, Katherine, “Institutions and Ideology: Sources of Opposition to Federal Regulation of Child Care Services in Canada and the United States,” Governance 5 (1992), 197–223CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In addition to influencing policy options and choices, institutional structure can also shape the way in which ideological arguments justifying these are framed, as the discussion below will show.

⁶ Extensive discussions on this subject began earlier in the United States than in Canada, dating back to the late 1960s. See Nelson, John R. Jr., “The Politics of Federal Day Care Regulation,” in Zigler, Edward F. and Gordon, Edmund W., eds., Day Care: Scientific and Social Policy Issues (Boston: Auburn House Publishing Company, 1982), 267–306Google Scholar. However, the ABC Bill instigated a new round of debate which coincided with the emergence of the issue in Canada in the late 1980s.

⁷ King, Desmond, The New Right: Politics, Markets and Citizenship (Chicago: Dorsey Press, 1987), 9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁸ See, for example, Kristol, Irving, Two Cheers for Capitalism (New York: Basic Books, 1978)Google Scholar; Stockman, David, The Triumph of Politics: How the Reagan Revolution Failed (New York: Harper & Row, 1986)Google Scholar; and, for an overview, Steinfels, Peter, The Neoconservatives: The Men Who Are Changing America's Politics (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979).Google Scholar

⁹ Himmelstein, Jerome L., To the Right: The Transformation of American Conservatism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 13–14Google Scholar. For an example, see Falwell, Jerry, Listen, America! (Garden City: Doubleday, 1980).Google Scholar

¹⁰ Klatch, Rebecca E., Women of the New Right (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987), 200–01Google Scholar. Klatch uses the phrase “laissez-faire conservative” to describe an individual subscribing to the tenets of what Himmelstein has labelled “economic libertarianism,” and we have here referred to as “economic conservatism.”

¹¹ Peele, , Revival and Reaction, 93.Google Scholar

¹² Conlan, Timothy, New Federalism: intergovernmental Reform from Nixon to Reagan (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1988), 12.Google Scholar

¹³ Gibbins, Roger, “Conservatism in Canada: The Ideological Impact of the 1984 Election,” in Cooper, Kornberg and Mishler, eds., Resurgence of Conservatism, 332–50.Google Scholar

¹⁴ For the former see Banting, Keith, “Social Policy in an Open Economy: Neoconservatism and the Canadian State,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco, California, 1990Google Scholar; for the latter, see the discussion in Gollner, and Salée, , “A Turn to the Right?” 9–22Google Scholar. For analyses stressing the ideologically conservative nature of the policies pursued by the Mulroney Conservatives see Johnson, Andrew F., “Canadian Social Services Beyond 1984: A Neo-Liberal Agenda,” in Gollner and Salée, eds., Canada under Mulroney, 265–83Google Scholar, and Prince, Michael J., “The Mulroney Agenda: A Right Turn for Ottawa?” in Prince, Michael J., ed., How Ottawa Spends 1986–87: Tracking the Tories (Toronto: Methuen, 1986), 1–64.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Gillespie, Michael and Lienesch, Michael, “Religion and the Resurgence of Conservatism,” in Cooper, Kornberg and Mishler, eds., Resurgence of Conservatism, 404–29.Google Scholar

¹⁶ See, for example, Blake, Donald, “Division and Cohesion: The Major Parties,” in Perlin, George, ed., Party Democracy in Canada: The Politics of National Party Conventions (Scarborough: Prentice-Hall, 1988), 32–53Google Scholar; Johnston, Richard, “The Ideological Structure of Opinion on Policy,” in Perlin, ed., Party Democracy, 54–71Google Scholar; and Nevitte, and Gibbins, , “Neoconservatism.”Google Scholar

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²⁰ Child Care Resource and Research Unit, “Child Care Information Sheets, 1987” (Toronto: Child Care Resource and Research Unit, 1987)Google Scholar; and Hayes, Cheryl D., Palmer, John L. and Zaslow, Martha J., eds., Who Cares for America's Children: Child Care Policy for the 1990s (Washington: National Academy Press, 1990), 315–23.Google Scholar

²¹ There were some minor changes made to the proposals regarding federal minimum standards in the 1988 version of the bill, but these failed to appease opponents of federal regulation in this policy area. The description here is based on the ABC Bill of 1988. See US House of Representatives, Committee on Education and Labor, Act for Better Child Care Services 1988: Report (Washington: September 27, 1988).Google Scholar

²² For a description of the lengthy, and rather tortuous, path followed by the ABC Bill and its legislative successors and alternatives see 1988 Congressional Quarterly Almanac (Washington: Congressional Quarterly, 1989), 365–68Google Scholar; 1959 Congressional Quarterly Almanac (Washington: Congressional Quarterly, 1990), 203–17Google Scholar; and 1990 Congressional Quarterly Almanac (Washington: Congressional Quarterly, 1991). 547–51.Google Scholar

²³ Government of Canada, Bill C-144: Canada Child Care Act (Ottawa: Supply and Services Canada, 1988)Google Scholar, 4.1 (c) and (d).

²⁴ In discussions of Bill C-144, there was frequent slippage between discussions centred on the advisability and appropriate form of national objectives for the child care legislation, and such discussion regarding national standards. Often in response to questions regarding the absence of national objectives from the body of the legislation, Conservative MPs responded as if the question had been focussed on the issue of specific standards instead. Thus, even though standards were not really at issue during much of this discussion, its language reads as if they were.

²⁵ Section 106A of the Accord provided that provinces could opt out of such programmes with financial compensation from the federal government as long as they put their own programmes in place that were compatible with the national objectives established for the federal programme.

²⁶ The government's February 1992 announcement that plans for a new national child care policy had been indefinitely abandoned suggested that this would be unlikely to occur in the short or medium term, unless there were a change of government at the federal level.

²⁷ It is also the case that some prominent neo-conservatives, while opposed to a federal regulatory role with respect to child care services, nonetheless supported a significant extension of federal support for the provision of such services. Republican Senator Orrin Hatch (Utah) was perhaps the most notable example.

²⁸ In both countries, such arguments were supplemented by claims that such a role was also unnecessary, since (it was argued) the provinces or states were doing, or would do, a good enough job without being required to do so by federal authorities.

²⁹ US House of Representatives, Subcommittee on Human Resources of the Committee on Education and Labor, Child Care: Hearing, April 21, 1988 (Washington: US Government Printing Office, 1988), 54.Google Scholar

³⁰ US Senate, Committee on Finance, Federal Role in Child Care: Hearing, September 22, 1988 (Washington: US Government Printing Office, 1989), 231.Google Scholar

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³² US Senate, Committee on Finance, Child Care Welfare Programs and Tax Credit Proposals: Hearings, April 18 and 19, 1989 (Washington: US Government Printing Office, 1989), 85.Google Scholar

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³⁷ Canada, House of Commons, Minutes of Proceedings and Evidence of the Legislative Committee on Bill C-144, Issue 5, September 8, 1988, 4:150–51.Google Scholar

³⁸ Canada, House of Commons Debates, September 21, 1988, 194–96.Google Scholar

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⁴⁰ Another strategy has been to employ unobtrusive policy instruments. For examples of both, see Banting, , “Social Policy,”Google Scholar and Lightman, Ernie and Irving, Allan, “Restructuring Canada's Welfare State,” Journal of Social Policy 20 (1991), 65–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴¹ The Globe and Mail, July 25, 1991Google Scholar, A:1. Ironically, this language echoes the statement of John Fryer (National Union of Provincial Government Employees), who argued for federal specification of minimum standards in the area of child care services by insisting that “the welfare of children must supersede the jurisdictional sensitivities of provincial governments.” Conservative members of the legislative committee on Bill C-144, before which he was testifying, rejected this transgression of constitutional boundaries as unacceptable (Minutes of Proceedings, 3:11–16).Google Scholar

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⁴⁵ Committee on Finance, Child Care Welfare Programs, 50.Google Scholar

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⁴⁷ Ibid., 361.

⁴⁸ Debates, September 26, 1988, 19635Google Scholar. It is not made clear, in this or similar arguments advanced by other individuals, why provincially established standards are less susceptible to this difficulty than those set at the federal level.

⁴⁹ Debates, August 11, 1988, 18187.Google Scholar

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⁵⁵ These views are contradicted by recent research which suggests that parents are not able to assess objectively the quality of care their children are receiving, evaluating it positively even when it is poor. See Miller, Angela Browne, The Day Care Dilemma: Critical Concerns for American Families (New York: Plenum Press, 1990).Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Subcommittee on Human Resources, Child Care, 373.Google Scholar

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