Good afternoon, and thanks for coming.
I'd like to have Ms. Lysack's comments on the universal child care benefit. In your view, there's something absurd in the way it is currently allocated. This allowance is taxable in the hands of the person who has the lowest income in the family. As an example, I'll give you the figures that were provided by the Department of Finance, which show the amount of money remaining in the family's pocket after tax, based on family type.
In all cases, regardless of family income, it is always the single-parent family that winds up with the least money, while the two-income family gets the most. Lastly, the family that receives the greatest benefit is a single-income family. I find that strange. One might think, first of all, that it should be the reverse, in that those who need the child care benefit the least are couples in which one of the members remains at home, followed by two-income couples; lastly, those who are definitely in the greatest need of government support are single-parent families.
In this area, the Bloc québécois had proposed a tax credit that would be implemented gradually based on family income, not the lowest income in the family. Thus, the least well-off would have received the full allowance, and it would have declined gradually as income increased, to a universal threshold of $700. However, that's not the arrangement adopted by the government. In view of your knowledge of the field, do you believe this arrangement would have been better for families than the one proposed by the government in its budget?