Madam Speaker, I listened with great interest as the member spoke on this issue. This motion talks about discrimination and it is founded on the concept of discrimination when in fact no discrimination exists.
The member gave the example of a $50,000 single income family and then compared that to two people making $25,000 each. The reality is a married couple with $50,000 and only one earner would always have the potential to send the one at home out to work. So it is not $50,000 to $50,000, it is perhaps $75,000 to $50,000 which is the whole premise of his argument. It is idiotic and the motion is idiotic.
I did the same thing. My wife stayed home during a certain period of my career. That was a personal choice we made. We did not come to the Government of Canada and ask if it could subsidize us somehow. They are really saying that working men or women are allowed to claim child tax credits and are also allowed caregiver credits, and they think this is improper.
If the discrimination argument were reversed they would be saying we should not give those people who are working the right to claim day care expenses of up to $7,000 per child. This leads into the last part of his argument that 70% of women would gladly go back home. I do not buy that. The argument is that women do not choose to go to work but that they are forced and driven out of their homes by the taxation system to go to work. There are many women, and I know thousands, and many in my family, who choose to work. They want to work and they want to be part of the workforce. They want to contribute to society in that way. We all contribute in our own way. Some contribute by staying at home, others contribute by interfacing in the workforce.
Is the member not really asking if we can get all these women to go back into the kitchen? He is not talking about discrimination. He is talking about a way of life he would like to live that existed a hundred years ago. That is where he wants us to go. He is a revisionist. I would like the member to give an answer to that.