Mr. Speaker, certainly there seems to be a great deal of defensiveness on the part of the government about a very simple concept of ending discrimination. I always thought that we would have a great deal of support on the Liberal benches for any attempt to end discrimination. Apparently not. Apparently this has generated all sorts of resistance.
The motion today is very simple. It is not simplistic, but simple. The tax system should be reformed to end discrimination against single income families with children. I am at a loss to understand why there would be such resistance and such anxiety on the other side.
I notice that on the other side when the position is indefensible, members opposite will misrepresent the position of their opponents and then attack that rather than try to defend their own position or even put forward, God forbid, a constructive alternative. No, what they do is misrepresent and then they attack the misrepresentation and they are the heroes again.
It is an old tired tactic. It is not going to work in this case because there are thousands and thousands of families in this country who at one point or another decide that the best household arrangement they can make is to have one of the parents care for the children of the family. They want some value attached to that choice. What they do not want is for that choice to be penalized, to be discriminated against.
Members of the government can protest all they like, but this is precisely what they are doing and have done for years and are refusing to stop doing, in spite of the fact that parties like our own have spent a great deal of time bringing this discrimination to the attention of government, to the attention of those who structure our tax system. We are simply asking for fairness, for an end to discrimination for people in our society who choose to spend a period of time for whatever reason caring full time for the children of a family.
It seems to me to be a concept that should be readily supported by the members opposite, but instead we hear some very, very strange language over there. We just heard a member talking about the workplace. Excuse me, but how many parents do not think that the place where they care for their children is a workplace? One works when one is caring for children. It is a workplace. It is time we recognized that it is a workplace and that that choice of work, if not being paid, should at least not be penalized.
The secretary of state went on at some length about all of the international work that Canada is doing to give value to unpaid work, which is very nice. What puzzles me is why we would put so much effort in that direction but fail to do the simple ordinary things that can be done through our own tax system at least not to penalize the people who are engaged in very important choices in our society.
The parliamentary secretary said that treating people equally does not mean equity. Is that not an interesting concept? How much discrimination in our society in the past has been justified by just such a specious argument as that?
If we are going to end discrimination against choices, if we are truly going to allow and validate free choice in our society about the best way to spend one's work time, particularly if that involves our own children, then surely ending discriminatory tax arrangements would be our number one priority. However, here we see the Liberal government members tying themselves in absolute knots trying to avoid the issue that we are laying on the table today.
I would like to mention that this has been an issue for Canadians for a long period of time. In 1994 a group of Canadians very close to this House, in the riding of Lanark—Carleton, raised an issue through the political process of my own party, the Reform Party. The issue concerned a young family in that riding.
The family had made the decision that one of the parents would work in the home full time giving care and guidance to the children in the family. Because of that work choice, the family felt very naturally that it should be given the same value as a choice of work would be given to any other Canadian. They made an arrangement whereby the parent caring for the children would be paid a salary from the other parent and the tax deductions and arrangements were claimed on that basis.
To the intense chagrin, disappointment and sorrow of this young family, Revenue Canada denied this arrangement and won the court case, a case which cost the family money it could ill afford but brought to make the point. The family then sought to redress the situation through the political process. They went to their local constituency association, explained the discrimination they had experienced and asked that policy making be put in place that would redress the situation.
The constituency association drafted a resolution and submitted it to the policy making process of the Reform Party assembly. The resolution was very simple. Often there is nothing complex about these issues, in spite of the protestations of government which seems to find complexities wherever it does not want to find solutions. The resolution stated, “The Reform Party supports a revision of the federal income tax regulations to end discrimination against parents who provide child care at home”.
This resolution went forward from the Lanark—Carleton constituency association. It was one of mine that was put forward. This went to all the other constituencies taking part in the assembly. The constituencies then ranked the resolutions that came forward. Three of the Lanark—Carleton resolutions made it to be debated, discussed and voted on at the assembly. One of those three resolutions from Lanark—Carleton was the one I just read.
From 600 resolutions that started at the constituency level, 40 reached the floor of the assembly by having levels of support suggesting that members of our party decided that they were important enough to debate. This resolution was passed at our assembly and is now part of Reform Party policy and has been since 1994. I will read it again. The Reform Party supports a revision of the federal income tax regulations to end discrimination against parents who provide child care at home. This has been part of our policy and part of our election platform. Through the tireless efforts of people like the hon. member for Calgary Centre this issue continues to be raised and will not go away. There can be all kinds of rhetorical evasions on the other side. There can be all kinds of misrepresentations and purple prose and trying to invoke the ghosts of old stereotypes but the fact is our party lives, as all Canadians do, in the society we have today where there are, as the hon. member for Mississauga South just mentioned, a variety of family arrangements. What we are proposing today is that these arrangements should not suffer any undue discrimination.
What kind of discrimination do they suffer? Perhaps hon. members will listen again to this. Federal tax, prebudget, paid by one earner families of four with a total income of $50,000 was $7,116. Post-1999 budget it was $6,464. The bottom line is one earner families paid 91% more tax after this budget than a two income family. It is unfair. It is discriminatory. We ask members to support us in putting an end to it today.