Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to rise to debate Bill C-244. I commend my hon. colleague from Mississauga South who is probably the most distinguished champion of fairness for families in the tax code. He has a noble record of promoting the importance of family in Canadian public policy as the basic institution of our society. This bill is one more effort to his credit. It follows on the successful passage of his private member's Motion No. 33 in the previous parliament which also sought to change the treatment of two parent families under the income tax code.
I and most of my colleagues from the official opposition support the intention of this bill. As a general rule I oppose proposed amendments to the Income Tax Act because I believe our 1,300 page tax code is too complex as it is. I believe in principle that tax policy ought to be neutral with respect to the choices that people make and that it ought not to be a vehicle for social or economic engineering or central planning. To a very large extent I would submit that the present tax code has become precisely that.
The hon. member for Mississauga South and I have had, and I am sure will continue to have, many provocative debates about the advisability of adopting a flat tax model which would replace the 1,300 page tax code and the several hundred pages of attendant regulations with a simple, pure, neutral and clean flat tax system. That is what I would prefer.
The other night I voted against the private member's bill of one of my colleagues, a bill which sought to provide for the deductibility of mortgage interest payments for the principal residence of taxpayers. I oppose measures of this nature in principle. I seek to remove the complexity from the tax code, not add to it.
Having said that, the current tax code in all its complexity is scandalously weighted against the most important institution in society and that is the natural family, the nuclear family, the traditional family, call it what we will, apply whatever adjective we want. The fact is the best social program is a strong family. The best school and day care is a strong family. The best day care workers and teachers are good parents who have time to spend with their children.
For too long legislators, bureaucrats and regulators have sought to diminish the role of that nuclear family. We have done so by creating a tax code which actively discriminates against the choices of many families that opt to have one of two parents stay at home to raise their children.
The hon. member for Mississauga South gave what I thought was insightful background data on the remarkable importance of parental bonding in the rearing of children in their early years. It almost could be taken as a given that the more parental contact there is in the early years of childhood, the better the child rearing experience, the better the child is as he or she matures, the better the family is, the better society is.
We ought to seek at the very least to create a tax code which treats families that seek to maximize their time with their children neutrally or at the very least, as someone proposed, we ought to make amendments to the tax code to positively discriminate in favour of such families.
In the current tax code there are no provisions for income splitting. There are no provisions which recognize that millions of Canadian two parent families give up a second income, forgo that extra household revenue in order to make the economic sacrifices necessary to spend more time with their children.
What do those families get in return from the tax system? They get utterly no recognition of making what is a responsible, I would argue the most responsible, social and familial choice. In fact, if families choose, as many do for legitimate and understandable reasons, to contract the services of a third party day care provider, the government says they are permitted to write the costs of those third party child care expenses off against their taxes through the child care tax deduction. What this does in effect is force the one income two parent family to subsidize through its taxes the choices of two income families that opt to raise their children through third party day care. This is completely irrational.
I truly feel for the many hundreds of thousands of families that feel this discrimination every day and are frustrated by it.
Bill C-244 would seek to mitigate part of this unfairness by permitting one spouse to deduct payments from another spouse for the raising of children at home. This would essentially allow families to contract for child care services in the house as opposed to doing it as a third party contract with some profit or non-profit day care operator.
A wife who works in the workforce can say to the husband “You are going to be my day care provider for our children. I am going to pay you to stay at home to raise the children and you are not going to be penalized”, or vice versa. It does not matter which gender is involved. What matters is the principle that families ought not to be discriminated against for making choices they believe are right.
During the election campaign as I went around my broadly middle class constituency with many young families, I found no issue that resonated more strongly with many of my constituents than the need for tax fairness for those families. These measures would go a long way toward providing that kind of fairness.
If I could use this opportunity to make an advertisement for the policy proposed by the Reform Party in this respect, we have proposed converting the child care tax deduction into a refundable credit that would be available to all families, to all parents. This refundable credit would, in a sense, be a subsidy for low income families that currently cannot take advantage of the deduction because many families do not have sufficient income against which to apply the deduction.
A refundable credit would provide recognition of the at home child care implicit expenses of many low income families. They would get a credit for it and families all the way up the income scale would get the same kind of recognition which they now are denied unless they pay for third party child care.
All members of this House surely must recognize that for too long we have allowed our laws to discriminate against the basic institution of our society. It is time to act. For too long too many governments, this government, the preceding government and the government before that, built up a tax code that made the wrong choices about families.
I know many members here agree with me. It is time for us to work together in a non-partisan way to see that legislation like Bill C-244 is enacted so that we can allow Canadian families to make the choices they believe are best for their children.