moved that Bill C-244, an act to amend the Income Tax Act and the Canada Pension Plan (transfer of income to spouse), be read the second time and referred to a committee.
Mr. Speaker, this bill is dedicated to my 16 year old daughter Whitney who said to me that the bill made so much sense the government should just do it.
In the words of Dr. Benjamin Spock, despite all the hard work, taking care of children and seeing them grow up to be fine young people gives most parents their greatest satisfaction in life. Intuitively he recognized the linkage between early childhood development and healthy adult outcomes. Today scientific research has proved that linkage and sent out a powerful message calling on governments to invest in children.
Bill C-244 is as much a health bill as it is a taxation bill. It proposes to amend the Income Tax Act to permit income splitting between spouses where one of them chooses to provide direct parental care in the home to their preschool children.
I first introduced this bill in the House of Commons on October 5, 1994 and laid out the substantive reasons why investing in children was both a fiscal and a social policy imperative. Research not only sustains that assertion but also provides compelling evidence that the quality of care during the formative years is one of the most important determinations of lifelong physical, mental and social health.
To recognize the importance of societal contribution of providing direct parental care this bill seeks to provide a tax break to families by allowing one spouse to pay the other through income splitting. As a consequence, the stay at home spouse would also be eligible to earn Canada pension plan benefits and both jobs and child care spaces would be freed up.
In the past I have also proposed other tax breaks such as the establishment of a caregiver tax credit or the converting of the child care expense deduction to a non-refundable tax credit and extending it to families with a stay at home parent. Regardless of the approach, the common feature is effectively to invest in the quality of early childhood care.
With regard to economic considerations, even the most conservative estimates of savings on health, social programs and criminal justice costs are $2 return for every $1 invested. It has not been until recently that researchers discovered just how significantly early childhood experiences affect the outcomes of our children. As such, the estimated potential economic return is likely understated.
In October 1994 before the standing committee on health Dr. Fraser Mustard, founder of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, presented substantive evidence that childhood outcomes were not a question of being rich or poor but rather of other factors related to the quality of care during the formative years. He also referred to the comprehensive research conducted by the Carnegie task force on meeting the needs of youth and children which was published in its 1994 report entitled “Starting Points”.
Its researched observed that good physical and mental health, the ability to learn, to cope with stress, to relate well with others and to have a positive outlook were all rooted in the earliest experiences of life. They concluded that where, how and with whom children spend their early years of life are the most important determinants of health.
I will summarize some of the key findings of the Carnegie research. At birth the brain is far from fully formed. In the days and weeks that follow vital neural connections called synapses form among the brain cells and create maps or pathways along which learning will take place. The first three years are crucial in establishing these connections and it is estimated that 80% of the lifetime development of the human brain takes place at this time.
The synapses do not, however, form automatically. Babies need food for their brains as well as their bodies, but not just good physical nourishment. They also need loving, responsive caregiving. They need to see light and movement, to hear voices and above all to be touched and held.
If we conceive of the brain as the most powerful computer imaginable, the child's surroundings act like a keyboard inputting experience. The computer comes with so much memory capacity that during the first three years it could store enough information that an army of people could input during that time. What sets the brain apart from the electronic computer is its fragile and ongoing relationship to the world around it. With proper stimulation brain synapses will form at a rapid pace, reaching adult levels by age two. By the end of three or four years the pace of learning slows because the synapses begin to wither away. Synapses that are not used are destroyed forever.
The quality of nutrition, caregiving and stimulation that a child receives determines not only the number of these connections or synapses but also how they are wired for both cognitive and emotional intelligence. As with cognitive intelligence, the development of emotional intelligence appears to hinge on the interplay between biology and early experience.
How infants are held, touched, fed, spoken to and gazed at seem to be the key to laying down the brain's mechanisms that will govern feelings and behaviour. On the other hand, an adverse environment can compromise a young child's brain functions and overall development, placing him or her at greater risk of developing a variety of cognitive, behavioural and physical difficulties. In some cases these effects may be irreversible.
Researchers have concluded that the incredible pace of learning in the early years will never again be attained in later years. Therefore if the brain development is slow at the beginning playing catch-up is vastly more difficult and costly in terms of personal sacrifice and social resources.
In April 1997 the Carnegie research was further corroborated by studies presented at the White House conference on early childhood development. The principal finding was that the neurological foundations for rational thinking, problem solving and general reasoning appear to be established by age one. The studies also found that spoken language has an astonishing impact on an infant's brain development.
For example, the number of words an infant hears each day from an attentive engaged adult is the single most important predictor of later intelligence, school success and social competence.
The study suggests that infants need not only a loving but also a talkative and articulate caregiver and that a more verbal family will increase the child's chances of positive health and social outcomes. The results further suggest that the period from birth to three years is so critical that parents actually play a more critical role in the child's intellectual development than teachers will at school.
They also reported that before birth genes predominantly direct how the brain establishes basic wiring patterns. Neurons grow and travel into distinct neighbourhoods waiting for further instructions. After birth, however, environmental factors predominate.
Further support for this research occurred in the fall of 1997 at the international conference of the Society of Neuroscience. Researchers reported that parental care makes such a lasting impression on an infant that maternal separation or neglect can profoundly affect the brain's biochemistry with lifelong consequences for growth and mental ability.
Children raised without being regularly hugged, caressed or stroked were found to have abnormally high levels of stress hormones. Although scientists have reported for decades that maternal deprivation can cause serious behavioural problems, researchers now find that neglect can warp the brain's neuro circuits, leading to higher levels of stress which can impair growth and development of the brain and the body.
These studies have all been well accepted by the world's leading child development experts. On April 23, 1998 the Canadian Institute of Child Health also announced its concurrence with the research to date. In a booklet entitled The First Years Last Forever it states:
At birth the brain is remarkably unfinished. The parts of the brain that handle thinking and remembering, as well as emotional and social behaviour, are very underdeveloped. The fact that the brain matures in the world, rather than in the womb, means that young children are deeply affected by their early experiences. Their relationships with parents and other important caregivers, the sights, sounds, smells and feelings they experience, the challenges they meet, do not influence just their moods.
These experiences actually affect the way children's brains become “wired”. In other words, early experiences help determine brain structure, thus shaping the way people learn, think and behave for the rest of their lives.
One of the overall concerns of the institute is as follows:
Our youngest children and their families are in a quiet crisis. The crisis is jeopardizing our children's healthy development, undermines school readiness, and ultimately threatens our economy.
As a result, it also concludes that more attention must be paid to the quality of care during the first three years of life.
Other significant support comes from the national forum on health which issued its report early in 1997. One of its major concerns related to early childhood development:
Evidence suggests that deprivation during early childhood can impair brain development and permanently hinder the development of cognition and speech. The impact on children's physical and mental health is significant and can only be partially offset by interventions later in life. The environment in which children are raised affects not only the number of brain cells and connections but also how they are `wired' which, in turn, influences their competence and coping skills.
The forum concluded there was an urgent need to invest in children and stated that failure to invest in the early years of life increases the remedial cost of health, education, social services and criminal justice costs. It also noted that children who are poor have more sickness, chronic illness, higher rates of injuries, more severe injuries and higher rates of death.
The forum states that while it firmly believes the primary responsibility for raising children lies with parents, it is in our collective interest to ensure the well-being of our children.
With regard to financial support, the forum pointed out that Canada is the only western industrialized country that does not take into the cost of raising children in the family home when determining how much tax families with children should pay compared to those without children.
In its interim discussion paper the forum went so far as to say that the Income Tax Act discriminates against families with children.
In its final report the forum recommended greater horizontal equity for families with children by reducing their overall tax burden to reflect our commitment to ensure that every child has an opportunity to realize its full potential. In relation to horizontal equity, the gravest social injustice of all time has to be the abandonment of the stay at home parent.
Managing the family home and caring for preschool children continues to be in my view the most important job in the world. It is an honourable profession which has not been recognized for its valuable contribution to our society. It is unpaid work but it is vital work which deserves to be compensated, and that is the point of Bill C-244.
This raises the question of parental preferences for caring for children. A 1997 Compass Research survey conducted in Alberta found that 95% of respondents felt that it was best for infants and preschoolers to be cared for by a parent. An earlier Canada-wide poll conducted by Decima Research found that 70% of parents of preschool children where both parents worked would prefer to have one of them provide direct parental care in the home if they could afford it.
Should a parent have to choose between the job that they need and the child that they love? Norway for example says no and announced that starting in August 1998 the government will pay $570 a month per child under three years of age where one parent provides direct parental care in the home.
The research evidence is irrefutable. The first years do last forever in terms of physical, mental and social health, but also in terms of societal health. The 1996 longitudinal survey on children and youth showed that 25% of Canadian children enter adult life with significant emotional, behavioural, academic or social problems. According to Dr. Steinhauer of Voices for Children, with one in four children entering adult life significantly handicapped, we can look forward to a society that will be less able to generate the economic base required to supply the social supports and services needed by one in four adults who are unable to carry their own weight.
To meet the needs of children in a diverse society, the preferred strategy is to provide flexibility, options and choices so that parents can determine the best possible care for their children. Given the clear linkage between the quality of care of children and lifelong health, we all stand to benefit by investing in children.
In his 1994 economic statement the finance minister acknowledged that linkage when he asserted that “good fiscal policy makes good social policy, and good social policy makes good fiscal policy”. Now that we are well under way to restoring Canada's fiscal health, the time is right to invest in the health and social well-being of Canadians in order to secure our fiscal health over the long term. In that context let there be no doubt that investment in early childhood development represents our best opportunity for sustainable returns.
For all these reasons I strongly encourage the Government of Canada to make investing in children a principal theme in its next federal budget. Within that envelope, consideration should be given to initiatives to address among other things parenting education, prenatal nutrition, fetal alcohol syndrome, early childhood development, community based child programs, and taxation of families with children. These are but a few elements of a pro child policy that will help to ensure not only the development of healthy children but also of a healthy country.