Thank you, madam Chair.
Professor Lahey, welcome. It's nice to see you again. It's been, I think, 39 years since we last met at Osgoode Hall Law School.
I wanted to ask you about the tax policies that you mentioned—the universal child care benefit, dependent spouse tax credits, and pension income splitting. I'm a member of the government, and I just wanted to explain that those are designed to accommodate women and men, who may or may not be parents, with regard to choices in how they live together in a long-term relationship or marriage. My concern is that changing or eliminating these policies could remove that choice as to whether or not to work outside the home. In fact, instead of trying to accommodate the way people often want to live, it would be engineering by tax law how they live.
Is the choice of whether or not to work outside the home not a legitimate one? Secondary to that, does the Income Tax Act treat men and women equally or unequally?