Need a baby sitter? Just dial 1-800-O-CANADA

I went to a dinner party last night in Quebec with old friends of the future Mrs. Hammer. Lots of little ones around, as a lot of our peer group seems to be at that point. Politics didn't really come up in conversation, but one thing I wondered is this. Quebec's provincial government already has an overwhelmingly popular $7-a-day program in place for day care. As we all know, the Tories and Liberals are battling each other to put forward their own program at the federal level.

My two questions are as follows:

What impact will any federal day care initiative have on the programs that Quebec, or any other province for that matter, already has in place?

More importantly, wouldn't it be nice if governments at all levels stopped tripping over each other to spend taxpayers' dollars on duplicate programs just to try and buy votes?