“On October 5 he arrived in Montreal to unveil a daycare policy that would create 400,000 new spaces for preschoolers. This measure was already outlined in the forty-point Liberal platform. The Montreal event was intended to flesh out details and publicize it. The announcement itself went smoothly until journalists began to question Turner and his retinue about the policy’s cost. Poor communications between Turner’s office and Lucie

Pépin, the caucus lead on the issue, had left this salient point unspecified. Turner said it would cost $4 billion, Raymond Garneau said that it would be less, and Peter Connolly estimated $8-10 billion. Each pronouncement was captured on camera and edited into a comedic collage for the evening news. Three days later, after the media had a field day lampooning the Liberals’ confusion, Turner called a press conference to announce that the cost of the 400,000 spaces would top $10.1 billion over seven years.

The media concluded that the Liberals, and their leader, continued to be inept. When the Liberals subsequently presented their other policy planks, they made little impression. All the painstaking policy work of the previous months seemed to have been for naught. Connolly took responsibility for the daycare botch-up to shield Turner.”