Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to the motion which has been presented by the hon. member for Abitibi. For many of the people watching it might be wise to read the motion:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government should legislate to grant a salary to mothers and fathers who stay at home to care for their children.
For many years, in spite of the concerned voices of many Canadian families and the intense lobbying work by many in this House including even some in the Liberal Party, the government has chosen tax funded support of only one approach to child care. That one approach is institutional day care, not parental care or extended family care, but only formal day care.
In the current budget I thought the Liberal cabinet and the finance minister might finally have heard parents who want the discrimination against their options of child care, including full time homemaker and parent, to stop. But they went in the other direction again. They increased the child care expense deduction for the cost of institutionalized day care by up to $2,000 more per child but did absolutely nothing to recognize the cost and value of other forms of care parents choose to provide. It is interesting that this is what they have done.
I have consulted a number of studies that point out how important parental care is to the long term emotional stability of children. Even without considering those studies, let us consider why the government cannot treat parents' choices equally. If the government will provide up to a $7,000 deduction for institutional receipted care expenses, why can parents who choose other options not also be considered? This question has been asked again and again by parents and it was asked loudly after the current budget ignored them one more time.
Perhaps the motion on the floor of the House today which calls for parents to be employed by the government, i.e., the government would pay them a salary to be parents, is the Liberal government's best solution, but surely we can do even better. I appreciate the member's attempt to recognize the value of parental care in the motion. I truly hope it is a real start. However, based on the federal government's repeated determination to only subsidize day care, and it increased the tax breaks for it just eight months ago, there is little real hope that the pattern will change with the current government. Parents will continue to be told that through the tax system the only valuable child care is non-parental day care. That is tragic.
Let us assume somebody is listening and perhaps today's debate will influence the government to finally consider changes to bring in fair family tax reforms. The Reform Party has long called for fair family tax reforms.
Let us seriously consider the motion. It calls for the government to pay parents. Does this give parents the freedom to choose the child care arrangement that best works for them? Does it allow them to make that choice without discriminating tax treatment? Is it really simple?
I have had parents ask me these questions. How would this work? If parents work part time and only use day care a little bit and care for their children at home the rest of the time, do they get a salary for being stay at home parents? What if a grandparent or another member of the extended family looked after the kids when the parents were working and occasionally day care was used but three days a week mom was home for part of the day, what do they get?
There are some families where parents work alternative shifts. One parent is with the children in the day and the other at night and maybe there is an hour with a sitter. Do these parents qualify? They both work but they both stay at home with the kids.
Add to this that life is dynamic. Situations change because of illness, job changes, moves, et cetera. Child care arrangements within families may often change several times in the same year.
Picture trying to figure all this out on an already overly complex tax form. Does this not add more stress to the family? Maybe there is a better way. There is and I am going to get to that in a moment.
First let me ask are Canadian families not also concerned about their country and the overall prudent operation of the government? I think they are. Why then would they want to pay the high taxes that they pay? I should point out that the Liberal government has raised taxes 37 times since coming to power. Why would they want to pay these high taxes and have the government flow that money through Revenue Canada and only have Revenue Canada give some of it back to the same taxpayer? This is expensive bureaucratic manoeuvring. Where is the value added by flowing the money through Revenue Canada? Put a dollar in and get 75 cents back out. The bureaucracy burns up the rest.
Why not just leave the dollar with the taxpaying family in the first place? Save us all the money. That family pays less tax and has more disposable income now when it is needed. Other taxpayers are saved the expense of collecting dollars from and returning dollars to the same people.
The Reform Party, driven by its membership made up of thousands of Canadian families, has long called for fair family tax treatment when it comes to child care costs. Instead of just a child care expense deduction for day care, Reformers have long proposed a child care expense credit that would be available to all parents. This per child credit can be deducted directly from the tax the parents are required to pay thereby leaving the money and the child care choices with them.
If the family has no tax to pay, then the credit would be paid to them in the form of a refund. This way everyone receives equal monetary recognition for the costs of child care, regardless of the method of child care chosen. As well, there is no added bureaucratic cost flowing through Revenue Canada.
Finally, let us examine the concept of paying someone to be a parent. The proposal in this Liberal motion today would give the appearance that stay at home parents are employed by the state. In effect, parents would be hired using their own money. This is strange. Down the road would conditions be applied to the salary? Is it conceivable that parents would be required to meet some government set of parenting rules or risk loosing the salary? Is that far-fetched? Perhaps, but why go down that road? History is full of examples of things that people thought would never happen, but they did. Do parents have children so they can be employed by the state? No. Parents have children to build a family and express their love.
It is better to recognize that there is a cost and a social contribution to raising the next generation of Canadians and all parents, regardless of the change in child care options chosen, should be given the same degree of tax relief. There is no salary that appropriately addresses the interaction between loving parents and their children and it is inappropriate to try to set one.
In summary, it is good that this motion is a recognition of significant tax inequities and tax discrimination against homemakers. Unfortunately, this government, in typical fashion, also demonstrates an approach that increases government dependency and wasteful spending through an inefficient methodology. Instead, replacing the child care expense deduction with a fully refundable child care expense credit is a much superior means to addressing the current inequities in the tax structure. It would not be dependent on the method of child care chosen and it would reduce both family and government administrative overhead.
This approach to a fair family tax system for Canadian families, which the Reform Party has long advocated and developed, is simple, flexible and efficient. Most importantly, it is good for Canadian families and it is good for the children they care for.