Madam Speaker, before commenting on the Reform Party's motion, I think it would be helpful to viewers to repeat the text of the motion, which reads as follows:
That, in the opinion of this House-and there was an amendment-the government should provide tax fairness for all Canadian families by extending the Child Care Tax deduction to all families of all income levels and converting it to a credit, thereby removing the tax bias against parents caring for their own children.
My first comment takes the form of a question. In the motion, we are not told whether this deduction will be converted to a refundable or a non-refundable credit. The motion does not say. However, if our information is correct, the Reform Party would like this deduction converted to a non-refundable credit, which means that a person paying tax could benefit from a deduction, whereas a person not earning enough to pay taxes would be deprived of this assistance for child care.
In other words, this could mean that a person or a couple earning $100,000 a year could be allowed a deduction for child care, but a couple earning $20,000 a year and paying no, or practically no, taxes, would not be eligible for a refundable credit.
The question then arises as to who is being helped. Is it those most in need of child care assistance, or those least in need of it? That is the first question.
However, if we consider the spirit of the Reform Party's motion, our conclusion must be that there is indeed a real problem, but we could still agree with it. There are people who need help, and we want to help them. The reference is to a policy, a policy on the family or an anti-poverty policy. Reform members tell us that this motion is part of their family policy.
At this point, perhaps we should consider the concept of family as seen by the Reform Party. As far as Reform members are concerned, a family is a group of individuals who are related and whose union is recognized by the state. We are therefore talking about a group of individuals related by blood, marriage or adoption. Clearly, Reform members, who are ultra-conservative, are dreaming of a concept that hardly applies today.
Some families today are single-parent families, but families nevertheless. With a concept as obsolete as the one held by Reform members, obviously their solutions to family problems will differ vastly from what we might expect of people with a more modern outlook.
Although we agree that Reform members are addressing a very real problem this morning, we do not quite agree with the way they intend to deal with that problem.
First of all, the Bloc Quebecois feels that providing assistance to families should be strictly a matter of provincial jurisdiction. What has the federal government done about all the promises it made during the last election campaign that it would help our families? The Liberal government promised to spend about $700 million to create 150,000 new daycare places. What did the Liberal government do about the promise it made in the red book? What did the Liberal government try to achieve? A fraction of that promise. The Liberal government claimed that because no agreement was reached between the federal government and the provinces, that was ample justification for the government to withdraw its commitment.
The Liberal government could at least have taken the money it had promised to spend and transferred it to the provinces, which would then have been able to implement the daycare plan or create spaces for children according to a plan of their own choosing and adapted to their own needs. The bulk of the responsibility for the lack of a family policy lies with the federal government, led by the Liberal Party.
It is also perhaps worthwhile at this point to indicate that, wishing to make this a provincial responsibility, Quebec and other provinces have recently been looking at family issues. In the wake of an economic summit at which this was much discussed, the Government of Quebec has taken certain steps. It is, I think, worth mentioning that Quebec's policy puts its children first.
If the federal government acknowledges that this is a provincial responsibility, it might be worthwhile to look at a picture of the Quebec family of today. Although the family plays as fundamental a role in our society as it did in the past, the changes that have occurred in Quebec society must be taken into consideration, and this is what was proposed at the summit.
These changes indicate just how necessary a new family policy is. I am defining the present family situation in Quebec because our commitment at the time of the election was to work in the interest of all Canadians, particularly Quebecers.
At this time, there are 1.66 million children in Quebec, one third of them under the age of six. They belong to 960,000 families, 20 per cent of which are headed by single-parents.
Twenty-three per cent of our families have an income of less than $25,000, while the average family income is $50,000. In 70 per cent of two-parent families with young children, both spouses work, while 20 years ago the figure was 30 per cent, so that the family profile has changed significantly. Furthermore, a steadily increasing number of people are self-employed or work at non-typical jobs, that is to say, jobs that are unstable, involve irregular working hours or are strictly casual employment.
These changes oblige us to rethink our policies and adapt them to the new needs of our society, to make them fair, consistent and sensible. That is why Quebec's family policy will be revised and restructured around three central themes, and we hope the federal government will recognize the relevance of these changes.
The policy's first theme is how we provide services for young children and includes the following: first, plans for making full-time kindergarten available to all five-year-olds will be implemented as of September 1997; second, accelerated phasing-in of part-time educational services and free daycare for four-year-olds from disadvantaged families; and the phasing-in over a six-year period of low cost daycare for all young children whose parents are either employed or going to school.
Phase one of daycare for four-year-olds will be implemented as of September 1997, while phase 5 for children under the age of one will start in 2001.
The second central theme of this program will be to improve financial support to families as follows: a comprehensive allowance covering the essential needs of all dependent children of low income parents, whether they are employed or on welfare. This new allowance will include the Quebec family allowance and that part of social assistance payments that is used to cover children's needs. This will be in addition to the federal tax credit, for the time being, provided the federal tax credit does not disappear sometime in the coming months. That may be the case when the next budget is brought down by the Minister of Finance.
The third component is a parental insurance that will provide, upon the birth of a child, benefits equivalent to 75 per cent of net earned income, for a period of 25 weeks. Here is a measure that will help families and pregnant women who want to look after their children but still have the possibility of returning, within a short period of time, to their job outside the family home. This parental insurance will also provide additional benefits for a period of six months, starting with the third child. It increases from $39,000 to $49,000 the ceiling for eligible earnings, and it provides an insurance fund that will be funded partly by recovering part of the contributions made by employers and employees to the employment insurance fund, as provided for under federal legislation, and partly by collecting additional contributions from workers who are not covered by the employment insurance program.
Again, we hope the federal government will co-operate and allow the Quebec government to take advantage of the federal provision that authorizes the use of the employment insurance fund for such purposes.
The Quebec government will also provide substantial help to children and young families. The beneficiaries of this reform are the people who immediately come to mind: women. For several years, women's groups in Quebec have been asking for concrete measures to help women reconcile their roles as mothers and active members of the workforce, without penalizing them.
The biggest winners of this family policy are the 550,000 Quebec children who are under six years of age, including those living in socioeconomically disadvantaged environments. Early childhood services include half-day classes and free child care for disadvantaged children under four. This is undoubtedly the best solution to ensure that all children benefit from equal opportunities, and to prevent teenagers from dropping out of school in such large numbers.
This policy also promotes a better balance between work and family. In a society where both parents work, adequate and available child care services are an absolute requirement. Educational and child care services are essential in a modern society, but they are insufficient.
The Quebec government wants to ensure that child benefits are based on the principle of fairness and constitute an incentive to work. These premises guided the development of the new integrated allowance that will better meet the basic needs of all children from low income families.
Finally, the new policy takes into account the profound changes that have occurred in the workplace, by proposing the creation of a new parental insurance program. This new system will be more accessible and more generous than the system now provided through employment insurance.
Furthermore, one of the most important indirect benefits of the new policy is that the rapid growth of day care services will encourage the development of the social economy, as well as facilitate the battle against the underground economy. For the Province of Quebec, as for Ontario and other Canadian provinces, this has become a very serious problem in recent years.
It must be pointed out that the proposed family policy shows that, despite a difficult budgetary context, which exists in Quebec as well as in Canada, we in Quebec at least have shown that we have the imagination and creativity to remain a progressive society that puts its children first. It is in this perspective that, in Quebec, the government has decided to adapt so as to continue to be a tool for social development and the key to its future success.
We sincerely believe that this is a progressive policy and that it confirms the dynamic role of the government to which citizens are so deeply attached. I wanted to highlight these statements by the Government of Quebec because it is what we would most like to see happen. The Reform Party motion proposes a very restrictive and limiting measure, and we feel that this is not the right approach.
The best chance for finding solutions lies in leaving this authority with the provinces, who are still in the best position to decide what is required so that the choices made by the provinces will better correspond to the real needs of their society, to the actual composition of their families, and will provide the best future for their children.