Madam Speaker, I welcome this opportunity to speak to the bill standing in the name of the hon. member for Fraser Valley East and entitled, an act respecting the office of the Auditor General for the Family. The hon. member made an excellent presentation and explained very clearly his reasons for proposing this legislation.
The purpose of this bill, after a preamble that stresses the importance of the nuclear family and states that Canada should encourage, support and protect it, is basically to appoint an Auditor General for the Family who would examine federal policies and make recommendations to ensure that the federal government encourages the development of the nuclear family.
The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Human Resources Development made it very clear that this bill is well intentioned. No one in this House wants to diminish the role of the family in our society, and everyone wants children to have a family in which they can develop their potential. The bill would, however, create a number of problems.
First, there is the definition of family. The bill refers to the nuclear family, the traditional family that is still very important. This is the family where there is a father, mother and children. However, for the past 20 or 30 years at least, we have seen changes in the family structure in Canada and Quebec.
We see families with only a father, or only a mother. We see families made up of individuals who previously belonged to other families. If we adopt the bill as presented by the hon. member for Fraser Valley East, this would mean ignoring a number of families that play just as important a role in bringing up their children as the nuclear family. These families would, to a certain extent, be discriminated against or overlooked.
My colleague, the member for Fraser Valley East, said this would not preclude steps being taken to foster the development of other kinds of families, but the fact remains that if we take the trouble to appoint an Auditor General for the Family who will be dedicated to the well-being of nuclear families, as it says in the bill, we are excluding a certain number of families. As many as 20 per cent of the families in this country do not correspond to the description of a nuclear family.
Yet it is in these families that children are often likely to need special programs. Not because their families are less competent than other families, but because the responsibilities of a single father or a single mother are tremendous. I think there is a case here
for government support. We see no indication in the bill of how these families would be helped by adopting this legislation.
The real problem, and the hon. member made this very clear, is the children. We want children to develop in a satisfactory family environment. I think that a satisfactory family environment, at least for many people like me, in the Bloc Quebecois, is first of all an environment in which there are sufficient resources to provide for the children's development, to clothe them, feed them and educate them. That is the kind of family environment in which a child has a chance to develop its potential.
I think that any steps we would want the Canadian government to take should be based on fighting poverty and maintaining social programs, if we want to support children who live in a family environment. It is vital to be clear on the problem: child poverty and family poverty cause young people to have health, social development and education problems. Therefore, I do not think the bill before us, despite the hon. member's good intentions, will contribute to improving the quality of children's lives in Canadian families.
Another problem I notice in reading the bill-and I apologize, Madam Speaker, perhaps many members in this House have heard this argument, these remarks, too often for their liking-but are again looking at a jurisdictional conflict between the provincial and federal governments.
In my opinion and in the opinion of many of the Bloc members, matters to do with family, marriage and families' private lives are more matters of provincial jurisdiction. So, once again, there would be a degree of conflict between an organization, an office of the auditor general, at the federal level and provincial institutions. Some provinces have family secretariats.
So again, we have not progressed from the stage where the federal and provincial governments often take contradictory or parallel measures, to the detriment of families and children needing care and support.
Even my colleague from the government said in his speech that daycare services should be set up. This would perhaps be more important at that point for the well-being of children living in a family setting. Daycare services, however, come under provincial jurisdiction. So we face the same dilemma, we are in stuck in this situation. I think there comes a time to put a stop to it.
Finally, and my colleague for Fraser Valley East mentioned it as well, there is the matter of taxation, a problem that can be detrimental to family life. Every year, in Quebec, as in Canada, there are reports and studies which tend to demonstrate that people with families are disadvantaged from the taxation point of view.
This leads us to again bring up the question of tax reform in Canada. Every year we hear the Minister of Finance, people from the health department and human resources development, government members saying that, yes, we will have to address the taxation issue in order to help families and to ensure greater equity, greater fiscal justice, in Canada. Good intentions still and again, but we have seen nothing concrete in the two years that we in the Bloc have been here.
We will vote against a measure such as this. The first reason, as I said at the start, is that it is aimed at the nuclear family and we believe, in light of recent changes-in the past ten, fifteen, twenty years in Canada we have seen major changes-we must not give preference to the nuclear family, despite all of its merits over the centuries, which it continues to have.
Second, this is an area where overlap with provincial jurisdictions is such that, in the long run, it would only fuel further argumentation and might cancel out certain pro-family clauses in provincial legislation.
Let me state once again that I am very much aware of the good intentions of the hon. member for Fraser Valley East. However, for the reasons I have just set out in my address, I personally, and the members of the Bloc Quebecois, will oppose such a measure.