Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to be able to speak on national child day on behalf of Canada's children.
It is not an exaggeration to say that for most Canadians children are our greatest and our most precious resource. Children are an investment. In the short term they are an investment in dollars and cents; in the long term in the very future and success of our country.
According to the Canadian Council on Social Development, the total monetary cost of raising a child from birth to age 18 is $157,000, and that only represents the short term financial commitment.
One cannot think about the commitment of time and energy or the emotional commitment involved in raising children without recognizing how important these young people are in our lives. For many families they are indeed what makes life worth living. They are our future and we want the very best for our children.
We commend a good initiative like the attempt to return abducted children to their homes, as announced by the Minister of Foreign Affairs today.
In my riding the threat of unaddressable fears of child abduction became only too real just this year. A parent there was faced with the reality of having no assurance that a child, under a Canadian court order to join a parent overseas, would be returned or could return to Canada. As the custodial parent he faced the uncertainty of the cruel reality of international child abduction.
For the sake of all parents and children in Canada, I urge the foreign affairs department to press forward and actively encourage all countries to sign on to The Hague convention.
The stresses and fragility that exist in families are reflected in the tragic statistics of runaways today. Too often these kids run from a home barely coping with increasing pressures and they run right into situations of danger, abuse and violence.
Today on national child day we must underline the importance of addressing not just the symptoms but the causes of such tragedy.
The tragedy in Canada in 1996 is that government policy today is constantly working against children and their families. Child poverty, which is a reflection of family poverty, has not improved under today's tax and spend Liberal government. How can it if 49 per cent of the average family's income is taken from it in taxes? Canadian families need tax relief.
Canada's low and middle income families need to keep more of their own money that will be used to alleviate their financial pressures, money that will be used on behalf of their children.
On the weekend we read another report about the tragic increase in suicides among Canada's young people. That rate has quadrupled in the last three decades. Experts say that one of the primary reasons for this increase is hopelessness and fear of the future. And that we see in our present economic situation.
The unemployment rate is hovering around 10 per cent while it is half that in the United States. The government has cut transfers to provinces dramatically without offering any substantial strategy for securing the access of Canadians to higher education and health care over the long term.
Despite the fact the government can no longer offer the security it once did, this same government refuses to allow Canadian families to keep more of their own income so that parents can fill this gap by making their own provisions for the security of their families and especially their children.
Presently there are about 30 federal programs which target spending toward children or issues that impact children most. The government has never done a substantial evaluation of those programs to see if they are producing the desired outcome. Yet its philosophy is simply to create more programs and throw more money at the problems.
What is needed is for Canadian families to keep more of their own earnings and use those earnings on behalf of their own children.