Providing Support to Grandparents Act

An Act to amend the Employment Insurance Act and the Income Tax Act (support for grandparents)

This bill was last introduced in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session, which ended in August 2015.

This bill was previously introduced in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session.

Sponsor

Claude Gravelle  NDP

Introduced as a private member’s bill. (These don’t often become law.)

Status

Outside the Order of Precedence (a private member's bill that hasn't yet won the draw that determines which private member's bills can be debated), as of March 26, 2013
(This bill did not become law.)

Summary

This is from the published bill. The Library of Parliament often publishes better independent summaries.

This enactment amends the Employment Insurance Act to allow a claimant to receive employment insurance benefits for parental leave in the case where a grandchild of the claimant under five years of age resides with the claimant on a full-time basis and the claimant is the primary source of financial support for the grandchild.
It also amends the Income Tax Act to provide that, in the case where grandparents are the primary source of financial support for a grandchild, the child care expense deduction may be applied against any and all taxable income of the lower-income spouse and, where the amount of the deduction exceeds the total amount of the taxable income of the lower-income spouse, the remaining portion of the deduction may be applied against any and all taxable income of the higher-income spouse.

Elsewhere

All sorts of information on this bill is available at LEGISinfo, an excellent resource from the Library of Parliament. You can also read the full text of the bill.

Support for Grandparents ActRoutine Proceedings

March 26th, 2013 / 10:05 a.m.
See context

NDP

Claude Gravelle NDP Nickel Belt, ON

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-487, An Act to amend the Employment Insurance Act and the Income Tax Act (support for grandparents).

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from Pierrefonds—Dollard for supporting my bill.

Today, I am happy to introduce my bill to amend the Employment Insurance Act and the Income Tax Act to support grandparents who are raising their grandchildren.

The 2011 census indicated there are over 75,000 children in Canada being raised by grandparents. These families are called skipped generation households. This is a dramatic increase of over 50% in just 20 years. In fact the figure of 75,000 children in these families is probably the tip of the iceberg, knowing that many of these arrangements are informal.

The main issue here is financial assistance for the grandparents who step up during a family crisis to take care of children. Most grandparents who raise a grandchild with no parents present are ineligible for the child care expenses deduction because they do not work or have a partner with no income. My bill will remove these barriers. My bill will also permit grandparents to receive employment insurance benefits for parental leave to take care of grandchildren under the age of five.

In some of these households, there are mental health issues, drug issues or other social issues. Thanks to organizations such as CANGRANDS, which is here today, these grandparents have stepped up to prevent their grandchildren from being placed into care and are frequently already struggling to make ends meet on limited incomes. The least we can do is recognize this and afford them the same benefits biological parents would receive.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)