Madam Speaker, when I first heard the supply day motion, I was briefly tempted to congratulate the hon. member and the Reform Party for raising issues that were genuinely worthy of consideration.
Improving tax fairness is something the government believes in strongly. That is why it has taken concrete action in each of its three budgets to close loopholes and eliminate inequities.
Then there is the action that would benefit children in need. Who would dare deny the special responsibility the government holds to use available resources actively and aggressively to protect and sustain the most innocent and vulnerable of all our citizens. Here again we have as a government taken concrete action, especially in the 1996 budget.
These are the issues the motion may appear to address. Unfortunately it takes only a moment's reflection to see through the illusion, to recognize that there is actually little or nothing about equity and nothing about compassion here at all. What is at work, masquerading in the guise of fairness and family, is an attempt to buy electoral support. Because underneath the rhetoric the motion proposes nothing less than a $5 billion tax cut. The hidden agenda behind the motion goes beyond deception into the realm of duplicity.
Not only are we being asked to endorse a dramatic tax cut in a year when the deficit is targeted at about $24 billion, it is a tax cut that will create unfairness in two ways. First, if the motion became law it would actually create inequity in the tax treatment of child care deductions. What is more damning is the fact that the real beneficiaries of this motion would be the affluent and the wealthy and their children at the expense of poor Canadians and their families.
This not so hidden agenda will come as no surprise to anyone who has studied the philosophy and the rhetoric of the Reform Party. Theirs is the gospel of comforting the comfortable and abusing the afflicted. Perhaps that sounds a little intemperate, but the false logic and perverse pandering of today's motion deserves no respect.
Let me prove my point by addressing the first aspect of this motion, the mistaken idea that fairness as enunciated by the Reform Party requires "extending the child care expense deduction to all families of all income levels". This is in keeping with the Reform's continuing allegation that the Income Tax Act discriminates against families that provide care at home for their children. They ask why working Canadians should be able to claim a deduction for their expenses when stay at home caregivers cannot claim the expense they incur.