Madam Speaker, I would like to thank our colleague from Mississauga South for bringing this bill forward as well as for many of the comments he has put on the record today.
It is unfortunate that this bill is not a votable bill. I think there is a feeling and a thought moving through all caucuses in this House that all private members' bills ought to be votable bills so that we not only hear the concerns of private members as expressed through their bills but also that we have a right to vote and represent the views and concerns of our constituents on these important matters brought forward by private members. Those are my opening comments on this bill that the hon. member has brought forward.
I have looked at the bill and am wondering about its constitutionality and its cost. The greatest pressure placed on any family is economic pressure. If there are not enough dollars to go around, it will weaken the other dynamics within a family and lead to frustration, irritation, confrontation and eventual disintegration of those emotions and feelings that keep a family together. In looking at how we can strengthen the family let us begin there first.
If this government wants to strengthen the family, let us look at how we can do it economically. When 50¢ of every dollar that the mother or father brings home goes to taxes in one way or another, that is an enormous attack on the economic viability of that family. What can we do in that regard? After we take money from them, do we direct money back to those who are experiencing difficulty, those living in poverty or below what we call the poverty line?
We have a disaster in this country in this particular area. Not only are we paying taxes at the highest rate in this country's history, but we have also borrowed and spent $600 billion. Yet all of these children are living in poverty. The hon. member is absolutely correct when he states that we cannot talk about children living in poverty. It is families and communities that are living in poverty. We must address that and look at the causes of it.
One of the single greatest contributing factors to family breakdown is when there is not enough money to meet the family's requirements at the end of each month, to pay the phone bill, the power bill and perhaps the mortgage. This is what causes the stress.
As far as poverty is concerned, I think many members of my age, and I go back quite a ways, were born in poverty compared to what we have today. I was born in a log house with a sod roof without the benefit of a doctor or a nurse. Three of my eight brothers were also born under those conditions. We lived in poverty. We did not have power. We had an outside sewer system, if I can call it that. We did not have central heating.
A few years ago I asked my mother, who is still living in Saskatoon, what she saw as the greatest advancement over the years. She thought for a moment and said central heating. I asked her why she would say that because I thought it would be something else. She said, “You do not know what it was like to wake up in the middle of the night in a house frozen solid with three babies in diapers and having to light a fire to heat the frozen milk and to change diapers under those conditions”.
How we survived I really do not know. Do you want to talk about poverty? You bet we lived in poverty but we made it. Every one of my brothers and I made it. Why? Because of the love we had from our mother and father even under those conditions. We were looked after. They made great sacrifices and we knew they cared for us.
We had a justice system hanging on the wall. We knew when we did wrong but it never affected our sense of justice. Later we knew that justice system hanging on the wall was there because it was an expression of dad's love for his children. He wanted us to stay away from the lake that had just frozen over because he did not want us to fall through. He did not want us playing with matches. He did not want us doing all these things that could place our lives at risk. We knew that and that was an inherent feeling.
Yes we had great difficulty. But I do know this. My father never paid personal income tax until I was 15 or 16 years old. I remember the first time I saw him sitting at a table struggling to fill out the new form called the personal income tax. When my father took his grain or his cattle to market, he kept 100% of that dollar he brought home and he put that into the family. It kept us going. He was able to meet the economic requirements of our family to a degree, although it was certainly nothing like we enjoy today.
I remember seeing a television program where a single mother living below what they call the poverty line was being interviewed. I remember the television program showing the conveniences they had. There was central heating. There was television. There was a fridge. There were electric lights. If we had that back in my day, we would have thought we were living in heaven. To turn on a coloured television set, to have central heating when we got up in the middle of the night and to go to an indoor bathroom and not freeze and not have to get dressed to do so would have been a wonderful thing for us.
Marital breakdown is a problem and I commend my colleague opposite for bringing this bill forward and at least focusing the attention of members of this House upon this very serious matter. Let us look at the cause of marital breakdown. I say the number one cause is actions by government at all three levels. That is what weakens the economic stability of the family. When the money runs out before the end of the month or before the next paycheque, it is a serious matter.
We were getting letters from the letter deliverers and their families asking us to do whatever we could to end the postal strike. Why? Because they went two weeks without a paycheque. How were they going to meet their commitments at the end of the month just before Christmas? When we see these kinds of initiatives by people in responsible positions further attacking and weakening the economic stability of the family, certainly we have reasons to look at what is happening along with the effect of what is happening.
Marital breakdown in this country can be attributed to some of the things that we as responsible people do, whether it is within this House, within a union, or wherever it might be.
We see in Edmonton for goodness sake that the union and management could not get together and save 800 jobs. What happened? They went on strike and for reasons that are not all that clear, they have lost their jobs because the company shut down.
I commend the hon. member for bringing this issue forward. I wish as I stated earlier that this were a votable matter so that we as elected representatives of the people could express our support for this bill by way of a vote. I would like it to go before committee and have it examined in other areas. The area of counselling, who will pay for that? Will the family have to pay for that? It will be another drain on the economic resources of the family.
There are all those questions I would like answered about the bill but regardless, I still feel that this is an initiative that is to be commended. It is directed at a very important area of society, that is, what is happening to our families, and how we can maintain the strength of the family and give our children the greatest opportunity to receive love from a mother and a father and keep that family together so that we have strong, healthy, self-reliant children growing into adulthood.