Mr. Speaker, I have a great deal of respect for the member opposite. He and I shared some time together on the Standing Committee on Finance. I got to know him as being an honourable gentleman. Therefore I can only assume he has not taken the time to understand what the Reform Party is about.
My wife and I have some very dear friends. When their children were growing up he was a school teacher and hated his job. His wife was a dental assistant and loved her job. They decided he would become a home husband, which we applauded.
The description the member has given of the Reform Party was completely out of place. The Reform Party is about choice. This is something that he and unfortunately his Liberal friends do not understand. The reality is that when he talks about one simple solution, his one simple solution is some kind of a national child day care program.
The difference is that the Reform Party is saying we should put the money in the hands of the people at the bottom end of the scale. We should give them the opportunity to have a choice, whether they are single parent families with a man or woman as the parent, whether they are traditional family units or whether they are in multiple family arrangements.
Let us assume for the sake of discussion we are talking about a woman with two or three children. This person is now in a position where she has a choice. She can do what the Liberals tell her to do, or not get any support if she decides to use a family member as the person who would be helping her with the rearing of her children or somebody she respects in the neighbourhood, perhaps a friend through some kind of charitable organization or church she belongs to. The Liberals, NDPers and Conservatives have the simple solution of some kind of massive child day care program.
Another point I am rather surprised by is that my friend, a very intelligent person, went along with the $21 billion figure. He seems to have lost the relationship between a tax credit and a tax deduction.
The Reform Party is talking about a tax credit. We want to get up to a million families away from paying taxes. Those million families would be at the bottom end of the scale and not at all as he described.
Rather than just reading the notes he was handed by the Prime Minister's office, which seems to have a good time coming up with all sorts of interpretations and misinformation of what Reform is all about, has the member actually taken the time to read the fresh start document so that he understands the Reform Party is about giving Canadians a choice in how they choose as parents their values and how they bring up their children?