Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to speak on this motion. It is put forward by an NDP member, although I do not like to say that because this is private members' business and when we deal with private members' business we should take the political designations out of it.
I have had occasion to get to know the member. I am impressed with his sincerity and his genuine desire to help families and to help people who are facing tremendous financial stresses and pressures in our country nowadays. I dislike having to say that I like this member, I like his ideas, I like his general principles and then immediately say that I am going to speak against his motion. I must do that for a very simple reason.
The member has proposed a motion that would selectively give assistance to families that are raising children. The motion states that the House “should consider implementing a tax credit or tax rebate that would compensate parents for the substantial costs of enrolling their children in youth activities”.
There is such a wide range of activities that our children engage in. Are we talking about summer camps? Are we talking about sports and music lessons, which have already been mentioned?
Another example of where the costs are tremendous is in providing an education for our children and teenagers. Are we going to extend a tax credit to people who choose to enroll their children in private schools, as my wife and I did? We had specific reasons for that and it took a considerable sacrifice on our part to do it. However, I do not regret it for a moment. It was money that was very well invested.
The truth is that we paid for those tuition fees with after tax dollars because the income tax system does not permit a deduction of those fees. If I were to speak in favour of this motion, then I would say that should also be included. For example, to pay an annual tuition of $4,000 a year for my young boys to attend the school of their choice and our choice, that $4,000 tuition required that I earn about $8,000.
My colleague from Calgary mentioned that the marginal tax rate is over 50% in Canada. This means I would have to earn over $8,000 in order to write a $4,000 cheque to the school. This would be a tremendously high proportion of a family's income. That extends to every area.
I then think of my children as young people on their way to university and college. It cost quite a bit of money to provide them with either transportation and room and board at home or with housing and tuition, the cost of books and cost of clothing, all of those costs, while they were students. According to our Income Tax Act, those costs were not deductible even though for us to help our guys, because they could not get a job or got a poorly paying job with few hours, we had to subsidize their education. It was fairly costly.
I would also like to commend my children for working very hard and very long hours in order to earn as much as they could. Here again, should that be with after tax dollars when we start paying $8,000 a year to educate a young person in college or university?
I would think that if we are going to provide deductions for hockey lessons and trombone lessons so that one day when they are prime minister they can provide some music, it should surely be acceptable to provide deductions to the parents or other relatives who are actually paying the fees to further the education of these young people.
I would like to propose something which is actually much better. Instead of introducing into the Income Tax Act new provisions, new categories where the items can be either deducted from income or entered as a tax credit eligibility, it would be much superior for us to simply try to get rid of our debt so that we can stop charging 30 cents on every $1 for interest. We thereby would provide tax relief to all Canadians at all levels with more disposable income. We could all use it.
It would help our economy. It would help our students and young people. It would help all of the families if we had a reduced tax load. More of them would be able to have jobs. More of them would then add to the economy. They would have a higher disposable income and more money in their pockets in order to provide for the needs of their families, whatever those needs are, the actual explicit expenditures they encounter or indirect ones.
Many families nowadays are really struggling. We have heard many times in this House that in order to have a balanced budget in the home both parents must work. As a result we have the social needs of the children, their parenting needs and also the tax needs to provide for the ability to look for day care or whatever is needed for the children, many of these things. The government should be out of the tax picture.
I would love it if in this country parents could have a free choice as to where they use their money for educating, training, or providing recreation for their children. Certainly they should have the choice of whether or not they want to actually parent their children themselves or hire others to do it. There are too many people who because of our excessively high rate of taxation simply do not have that choice. We are slaves to our tax system.
The member for Winnipeg—Transcona mentioned in his speech, and I have had the same experience, that charitable organizations have to charge the GST on the different functions they do to try to raise money to behave in a charitable way in their community. I do not know how this government can do that and still have any collective conscience.
I do not know how the Minister of Finance, the Prime Minister and all those individual Liberal members over there can sleep at night knowing that what they are doing is wrenching every dollar they can from Canadians in order to provide for the things that they value. It gives them such a sense of power to be able to tax Canadians and then decide where they will give it back.
We have noticed lately that if these people are good Liberal members with a paid up membership they are more likely to be eligible to receive a government appointment and things like that. It is unconscionable.
Whenever I think of voting for a bill that spends money or of approving an expenditure of a committee, I like to think in my mind of any family back in my riding whose whole annual tax bill in some cases will go to provide for that expenditure. We need to become much more conscious here of the burden we are putting on people.