Canada’s new conservative government is on a roll with Stephen Harper threatening an early election if his budget – which contains a few controversial items – is rejected by parliament. And poll numbers indicate he would do well if such a snap election were held today.

This week the debate has centered around one of the more interesting features of the upcoming budget, the proposed childcare benefit which amounts to a taxable $1200 cash benefit per year for each pre-school child. Of course, the critics are correct in pointing out that this is a pretty measly hand-out which won’t buy you an awful lot of care for your child. But that is not the point here.

With the proposed childcare benefit, Harper aims to achieve a few things. Firstly, in order to fund it he will scrap the bloated one-size-fits-all solution put in place by the previous Liberal government which will inevitably create a unionized, huge in overheads, behemoth that will benefit and take care of everyone except your child. It’s an outdated solution, based on an outdated nanny-state philosophy. Secondly, and this is the more interesting part, the new childcare benefit seeks to give parents who have made the choice to stay at home something of value which they would miss out on if the one-size-fits-all solution were to be implemented. You want to invest in your child? Great, but don’t expect to see any of your tax dollars coming your way as we need it to fund our cradle-to-grave plans for other children. So, the new plan above all gives parents the right to make their own choice and frees them from being subject to an expensive institutionalized system of almost mandatory daycare.

All sound logic you will say, but the left has reacted as if bitten by a snake. Yesterday’s Globe and Mail ran the same picture of Harper as the one you see above, but it was accompanied by the headline “Social Conservatives to sell Tory daycare plan”. The positive, well-meaning and sometimes costly choice to stay at home for the first few formative years of your child’s life is for some not a particularly progressive choice. Worse, today’s “progressives” tend to look down upon moms and dads that are willing to forego income to help raise their child.

One other thing will also take center stage here. Many opponents to Harper’s plan will argue that some do need the old statist solution to their problems because some just can’t make ends meet without it. You won’t here a response to this argument from the conservatives, too awkward politically, but I will hand it to you: If you can’t make ends meet, you shouldn’t have a baby; if you’re a single mom you haven’t exactly acted very responsibly in getting pregnant in the first place; if your marriage is rocky then maybe you shouldn’t have a baby. In short, take responsibility.

It is too early a stage to throw a value as “socially conservative” as ‘responsibility’ in front of your average citizen, but with his childcare plans Stephen Harper has at least made an earnest beginning. By the time the little kid that pinches his nose is a grown up, maybe citizens can be expected to responsibly make their own choices without the omnipresent state as the giver of last resort.