I ask the House through the Speaker to voice its support again today so that we can begin working on implementing this legislation which will modernize our child support system and protect the needs of children after divorce.
This legislation confirms our promise to put children first, a promise we made when we announced the child support strategy. This strategy was announced in last year's budget by the finance minister. It includes child support guidelines, a change in the tax treatment of child support and the redirecting of all revenues that are generated from such change to poor children. It also improves the enforcement measures. All of these changes are expected to come into force on May 1, 1997.
The child support reforms are a product of six years of collaboration with the provinces and territories through the federal, provincial and territorial family law committee. For six years the provinces and the federal government worked closely together to pool research efforts and moneys to develop a child support formula suited to the Canadian context and based on solid economic research of family expenditures on children.
Bill C-41 is also the product of extensive consultation with all stakeholder groups. At least three separate series of consultations were conducted and hundreds of submissions were received and reviewed. Over 8,000 copies of the federal, provincial and territorial family law committee's original report have been distributed across the country.
All governments and groups have had a significant impact in some way on the guidelines. The result is that no one group is completely satisfied. Each group would have done a number of things differently had it had sole control of the project. However, most of them have put aside their own preferences in favour of the goal of national consistency and co-ordination.
There is a clear recognition that these guidelines are a great improvement over the current system, and it is recognized by the courts and family law practitioners who are already-