Canada's Conservative government brought in its first budget this week, including its anticipated childcare benefit: Canadian parents will receive $100 per month per child for each child under 6. That means that as soon as Baby 2.0 busts loose later this summer, our household should be receiving $200 per month -- $2400 a year! -- to cover childcare costs. I should be jumping for joy, right?

Well, that would be before I pay taxes on that $2400 -- let's figure $800 of that $2400. And before I write the cheque for a single month of my elder child's daycare fees: $1100. So what if I have another eleven months of daycare to pay for, and a second child to care for -- I still have $500 dollars in my pocket!

The inadequacy of the $500 isn't what bugs me. It's the fact that it's so hard to find daycare options in the first place -- and the Tories' decision to scrap a $5 billion national childcare program isn't going to make it any easier. We're going to continue my daughter's daily commute across town (sorry, Kyoto proponents) because there aren't any available daycare spaces near our home. And forget about finding daycare options for the new baby: infant spaces in Vancouver are filled up by people who register before that dot on the pregancy test turns pink.

Like a lot of parents of young children -- parents who need childcare in order to return to work, rather than a few extra dollars to make the stay-at-home option a little less stressful -- what we'd really like are good-quality, safe and affordable childcare options. And as many childcare advocates have pointed out ever since the Tories first made this a campaign promise, the $100/month subsidy will do nothing to create actual childcare spaces -- and very little to make existing childcare any more affordable.

What $1,200 pre-tax dollars can do is open the door for an interesting online campaign. We've been tempted to pledge our $200/month to an organization that actually could use the money to create more affordable childcare options. But our $200 won't do much unless it's matched by all the other exasperated parents out there who would prefer quality childcare to pocket money.

Which is why I'm now looking for inspirational examples of innovative online pledge drives, or innovative ideas for how to encourage people to pledge their childcare benefit (or a portion thereof) towards meaningful support for childcare. What kind of pledge scheme would encourage people to funnel some of these dollars towards childcare associations? Which kinds of recipient organizations should be selected? How can a pledge project transcend partisanship and help people focus on their shared interest in a concrete outcome like affordable childcare?