Mr. Speaker, there are a number of questions and I will go fairly quickly. Yes, we did vote against some of the initiatives which this member just raised. Our proposal detailed how a million low income Canadians would come off the tax roll. We are asking why those low income Canadians were ever on there in the first place.
The member has talked about the various budgets they brought forward to help low income Canadians. As far as dealing with the motion today, the inequity or the differential between single and dual income families has only been accentuated by the government opposite.
In its previous budget of 1998 it actually increased the amount of money that can be claimed for child care expenses in an institutional day care. Again it totally ignored the other arrangements of parents in the best interest of their families. It only increased the differential.
As far as the child tax benefit is concerned, one of the tragic points about it is that it is more of a bureaucracy benefit. The government takes money away from the same families it then pays the tax benefit to. They give $1 to the bureaucracy and the bureaucracy burns up 40 cents of the dollar and gives 60 cents back to Canadians. Why does it not just leave the money with families in the first place?
A lot of improvements are needed over there. It is a fundamental rework of the way they approach the whole tax structure.