Thank goodness for Canada’s women. They won 16 medals in Turin (twice as many as the men), giving a whole new meaning to the phrase, “play like a girl.” Without them, Canada would have placed 14th in the medal standings. With them, we came third.

Now we’re counting on women to save our national bacon in the political arena, too. In particular, Canadian women — individually and collectively — will be the key players in the first major legislative contest facing Stephen Harper’s minority government: the battle over national child care.

After two decades of stalled progress and unfulfilled promises, the previous Liberal minority (pushed by the NDP and the Bloc Québécois) finally cobbled together a national child-care program, based initially on bilateral funding deals with the provinces. Psychologists, educators and even the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development all agree. Our current patchwork of often informal, under-funded early childhood education undermines the brain power of our kids, and the performance of our economy. Finally, we started to fix it.

The Conservatives, however, promised to dismantle the nascent program in favour of a reincarnated baby bonus: $100 per month (taxable) for each child under six. Cash-strapped parents will welcome the money. But it will do absolutely nothing to create quality child-care spaces.

The government has already announced it will abolish the bilateral funding (even those agreements signed for five years) next spring.

The opposition parties, however, all support the national program (the Bloc on condition that Quebec retains autonomy over standards). Together, they won 58 per cent of the popular vote in January, compared to 36 per cent for the Conservatives, and hold 183 seats, compared to 125 held by the Conservatives. In a minority Parliament, they clearly have the power to prevent Mr. Harper from destroying the new national system. And in doing so, they would be acting completely consistently with the expressed preferences of Canadians.

Fiscally, Ottawa can easily afford both the Conservatives’ baby bonus (worth something over $1.5-billion per year, net of taxes collected) and continuing federal contributions to the national program (worth another $1-billion per year). In that regard, we could have our daycare cake, and eat it, too. The opposition parties could then approve Mr. Harper’s first budget, on condition that it include a five-year funding commitment to the national program. This sort of compromise should be a no-brainer in a minority situation.

Unfortunately, it won’t be that simple. Nobody wants another election, of course (we didn’t want one last Christmas either), and Mr. Harper will use this to play chicken — governing as if he actually won a majority. Meanwhile, the opposition parties, perversely, are still as focused on outfoxing each other, as on preventing the destruction of the first new national social program in decades.

That’s where Canadian women must step up to the podium, with their passion and activism. They can press Mr. Harper hard, but also the opposition parties, by quickly mobilizing a grassroots campaign to save the child-care program. The Conservatives must be challenged to continue the funding. The opposition parties, for their part, must be pushed to be ready to defeat the Harper government, if it refuses.

The movement is circulating an open letter to defend the national program, lobbying the provinces to draw a line in the sand over the issue, and organizing rallies and demonstrations (including on Mother’s Day) to show both the Conservatives and the opposition parties that they’ll pay a price if the new program collapses. We need the direct power of public opinion, undiluted by parliamentary machinations, to stop Mr. Harper — something like that famous “Goodbye Charlie Brown” moment that stopped Brian Mulroney from de-indexing pensions two decades ago.

Child care, of course, is not just a women’s issue. The lifetime potential of our children, the productivity of our economy, and the quality of fathers’ lives will all suffer if this program slips through our grasp. But women have the most to lose, if we now abandon the principle that early-years education is a collective priority, requiring a well-funded, collective strategy. If women can win this one — for our kids today, and our kids still to be born — they’ll deserve much more than a goldmedal.

Jim Stanford

Jim Stanford is economist and director of the Centre for Future Work, a progressive labour economics institute based in Vancouver. He has a PhD in economics from the New School for Social Research in New...