I'm trying to come up with a solution that will gain all-party support. We have to recognize that high-income young people with children under the age of six are going to be a small percentage of the population. Perhaps some people with inherited wealth will be in that category, but I suspect it's going to be very few. Since the federal Conservatives have come to power, they've extended two of their tweakings. They introduced a $300-per-family non-refundable tax credit that's available to anyone who pays taxes. That's why I said this was a very non-progressive benefit. You have to pay tax to get up to $300, and to get your full $300, you have to pay a significant amount of federal income tax. So that's a very regressive tax. We're suggesting that the up-to-$300 non-refundable credit be eliminated and the $1.5 billion in savings applied to the basic benefit, where there is a phase-out for higher-income Canadians.
The universal child care benefit has very little to do with child care and nothing to do with building a child care system. It is simply another way to support families with children. You have to ask yourself, is it really that bad a benefit? Parents of very young children tend to be younger parents, just getting started in careers, and they incur more costs for child care than parents of school-aged children do, simply because their kids aren't in school yet. If you recall, there was a supplement for children under seven that was abolished when the UCCB was brought in. Is it so bad to retain it? If you're going to have anything that's universal, it should be benefits that go to younger parents of preschool children. The odd young family that has inherited wealth maybe doesn't need it, but that's such a small percentage of parents that we don't think it's worth removing the universality from the benefit.
I talked about the poverty wall dimension. There's nothing wrong with certain benefits being universal. If we weight things too heavily to phasing things out as income rises, we can create high marginal tax rates for low-income families. This actually discourages them from earning additional income, because they're going to lose benefits, including child tax benefits, as their income goes up. So, yes, this is our proposal. I'm looking forward to the committee's assessment of it when it becomes available in both official languages. We've put a specific proposal forward, and we'd be glad to continue the dialogue on it.