Madam Speaker, I say at the outset that I agree with the sentiment of the motion before the House today on poverty. It is an extremely important issue. It is an issue that puts our children particularly as having the first call on the resources of the nation, and with that I agree.
With regard to the specifics of the motion I do not agree. I want to quickly share why I do not agree on each of the points and ask for the member's comments.
The first item is with regard to increasing the basic amount, the non-refundable tax credit from the current $6,456 up to $10,000. That action would in fact be a benefit for all Canadians right across the board. It would be a tremendously expensive proposition and certainly would not focus dollars. Therefore I am not in favour of across the board increases.
Second, indexing the brackets would simply only benefit those who are currently making over $30,000 a year. Again it misses the target. The target is not those making more than $30,000 a year. We all know it is something much less.
Finally, with regard to the child tax benefit, there is no question that is one that specifically does go because it is income tested to our lowest income Canadians. An indexation of that in the current year would only generate an additional $14 a year to a family. That itself is absolutely insignificant compared to the cost of the other matters the Conservative Party is raising today.
All of the things his party is proposing have nothing to do with real poverty. Given that, would the member not agree that the important element in addressing poverty is first to define real poverty, not relative poverty, and to establish ways in which we can focus and target our resources to deal with real poverty in Canada? Real poverty is what they were talking about in 1989, food, shelter and clothing, and not what they are talking about today on child poverty, when they say that child poverty exists when children cannot go to a birthday party because they cannot afford a good enough gift.