Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to have the opportunity to make a few comments in this debate. I begin by congratulating the hon. member for Nepean on bringing forward the motion. Her interest in and her support for women and children caught in untenable situations have long been known. We are all very grateful to the hon. member for Nepean for bringing it to the forefront in the House of Commons.
With regard to the whole way the income tax system deals with the questions of child support and maintenance, there is a rather high level of misapprehension and misunderstanding out there among even those people who are involved in the system.
The first thing to remember is that we have a very bad rate of collection of maintenance and child support in the country. Currently only 37 per cent of child support orders are enforceable in Canada.
When I started practising law in 1980 it was worse. The non-compliers were in the high nineties. However clearly 63 per cent of child support payments are unenforceable and in the province of Ontario 80 per cent are either unenforceable or in arrears. That is unacceptable in a country like Canada. That is why I want to speak very much in favour of the government's initiative in setting up the task force to go across the country to consult with Canadians, the women who receive these payments on behalf of themselves and their children, the men who pay the payments, and the lawyers who represent them both.
The ramifications of the Thibaudeau case are not simple. They are very complex. The problems of the tax system are not simple; they are very complex.
We have here a question of fairness, not just fairness to those people who are the payers and payees of child support but fairness to families as my colleague from Central Nova and other colleagues have mentioned. There is a question of fairness to those mothers and fathers who co-parent and who also need tax breaks.
There is the question of poverty among women and children. It is very important to note that we should not separate women and children. The number of children who live below the poverty line is unacceptable and in the vast majority of cases their mothers live with them. We have to look at the problem and deal with it in the broader sense, not merely in the context of the Thibaudeau decision and in the context of the Income Tax Act.
Fair taxes are something that we on this side of the House are very concerned with. It is absolutely crucial that Canadians, and Canadian women in particular who think the Thibaudeau case was a bonus for them, understand there is more to it. We must have a policy.
I commend the Minister of Finance, the Minister of Justice, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance and the Secretary of State for the Status of Women. This task force will bring us the consultations we need to formulate the policy.