Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to this most important motion. The objective of the motion is to encourage the government to try to understand the difficulties that families are facing in today's society.
It seems obvious to me from listening to the debate that the government just does not understand the difficult choices families have to make. We do not have to go too far back to observe some of the actions of the government and reflect on the result of those actions to see that that is the case.
For example, the government refused recently to take realistic action to discourage children from smoking. That is important. It is a health issue. It is important to try to bring that issue forward to children yet the government seems to ignore that concern. Recently it refused to protect children from sexual predators by not invoking the notwithstanding clause after a recent unfortunate court decision in British Columbia.
Today the type of issue we are talking about is that the government refuses to ensure that families are treated fairly under the tax system. In fact, it denigrates the role that has been played by stay at home parents.
Much mention has been made today about the comments of the junior minister of finance. The most unfortunate comments that he made reflected a real lack of understanding of the important role that homemakers play. Those comments of the junior minister are not to be unexpected.
As an example, the Prime Minister's office produced talking points recently which said that Reform does not understand the modern family, that parents work for a variety of reasons and finances is only one of them, and that the Reform platform assumes that increased tax deductions will encourage parents to quit their jobs and return to the kitchen. That is a shameful comment. It comes right out of the Prime Minister's office and shows a complete lack of understanding of the important job parents do when they decide to stay home to provide care for their children.
That disregard for that important role was expressed very clearly by the member for Vancouver Kingsway who talks about the low esteem that may keep parents at home. It is low esteem if one desires to stay at home and look after children. She refers in that same statement to parents who decide to stay at home as being looked down upon as misfits. I find it outrageous that anyone could think those things and then try to suggest they were misunderstood. The words speak for themselves. Parents, she says, who stay at home are simply taking the easy way out.
I have a real concern about that because that is simply not the case. It is not the easy way out. It is the difficult way out in many respects.
I have a friend. Both he and his wife are well educated people, both capable of providing an income for the family. It would be a modest income because we know how the tax penalizes single family earners. A few years ago this friend of mine, who as a matter of fact ran for parliament in 1988, decided that he would stay home and look after the home front while his wife went out to work. He stayed home to look after their two young children until they were well into their elementary school years. It was difficult for him. Not that many years ago many people did not understand why he would choose to stay home, because as I said, he certainly was capable of earning a living. But that was a choice that he made.
My friend is going to be penalized all the way down the line for that in a financial way. Maybe I will talk a little bit more about that, about the financial sacrifices that were made by that family and the sacrifices that will be felt in the years to come when both parents elect to retire.
Again the sacrifice that people make is ignored. The member from Essex—Windsor talks about stay at home parents as a nostalgic notion promoted by the Reform Party. It is an absolute outrage to refer to a stay at home parent and those who wish to do that as a nostalgic notion. I am disturbed by that. I am disturbed by the notion that somehow people who stay at home are misfits.
My wife was a well-qualified teacher. She chose to stay home and look after our son many years ago. I think he appreciates that to this day.
C. D. Howe Institute researcher Kenneth Boessenkool calculated that a dual earner family with two preschool children and an income of $70,000 gets more than $14,000 in child related tax breaks that are not available to the single earner family. That is absolutely astounding, $14,000. That is over $1,000 a month in benefits that accrue to a dual earner family, benefits that are denied to a single earner family.
In fact in the C. D. Howe Institute document, Boessenkool traces the federal government's tax treatment of families with children since World War II. He notes that in earlier decades income tax provided reasonable tax deductions for children to both single and dual earner families. In recent years however, he notes, tax benefits have been targeted toward very poor families and dual earner families. Middle income, single earner families with children are taxed as heavily as families without children. Let me repeat that. Middle income, single earner families with children are taxed as heavily as families without children.
How are we going to prepare ourselves for the future? How are we going to prepare our children for the future if we are taxing their parents to death? How are they to pay the high tuition fees that are required today if they are facing a tax regime which is that stringent and unmerciful?
Boessenkool notes that it is unfair. The tax system should accommodate the cost of child rearing whether or not both parents are working outside the home. He argues further and makes three points that I want to raise here as well.
First, he says that the tax system no longer recognizes the cost of raising children in all families. That is true. The facts are there and are very, very clear.
Second, he notes that to the extent that the tax system has relieved the burden for middle and upper income families with children, it has done so disproportionately for dual earner families through generous child care exemptions. Again, the discrimination there is built into the tax system and has been ignored by the finance minister who acknowledges that the problem exists yet for five years has done nothing to rectify it.
Finally, Boessenkool notes that the combination of clawed back social policy transfers plus income and other taxes has created unacceptably high effective marginal tax rates for families earning between $20,000 and $30,000. I do not think one can live on $20,000 or $30,000 in the area where I live. I do not know whether there are many areas in Canada where one is going to be able to survive on between $20,000 and $30,000.
It is also important to recognize that we are not whistling in the dark over here or singing a tune alone on this issue. There is a loud chorus behind us.
An October 1998 Compas poll showed that 92% of Canadians felt that families with children today were under more stress than 50 years ago, 90% felt that parents were working too hard and too many hours and 78% felt that not enough respect was given for the effort parents put into raising children. That is a serious condemnation of this government's policies. They are out of line with what the public is saying.
The Vanier Institute pointed out that single income families with children are 3.8 times more likely to have a low income than a dual income family.
It is a serious problem and I appreciate the opportunity to address it today.