Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege as a Canadian Alliance member to support my colleague's bill, the member for Calgary Centre.
I have the privilege of having several adopted nephews, four to be exact, and an adopted niece. In a counselling role, I have worked with couples who were sterile or could not conceive a child in the normal way. It was a big concern to them to have the adoption option. It would also have been a big concern to those people to have some kind of support. Some of them did not have a lot of financial means. They came from lower income groups and would have found it to be a a great drain on their resources to adopt children.
Nevertheless, many parents do proceed at great sacrifice because children are dear, special and precious to them, but I do believe that it would be of great assistance to have the kinds of measure that are in the bill before us today.
Bill C-289, as has been said, is essentially an adoption expense deduction bill. We are not talking about an infinite amount of dollars that would be allowed as an income tax deduction, as my Liberal colleague across the way inferred at a point. It is capped at $7,000 for expenses incurred as a result of adopting a child.
As members on this side of the House have said, I would also agree that this is not a simple purchase of a car or some other luxury item. This rates as an altogether different kind of thing. These are couples who want to adopt because they are in some cases sterile or for various other reasons cannot have children by the normal way. It is not purely a discretionary issue or choice as was implied by my colleague across the way.
The deduction would be available for the adoption of any child under 17 years old, matching the child care expense deduction provisions. Expenses to be reimbursed by the employer or by government would not be eligible for the tax deduction.
As has been stated by colleagues in the House in response to the bill thus far, without doubt adoptive parents would face a huge financial burden. It does not matter whether the adoption process is public or private or whether it is in Canada. When it is international it involves travel and involves a great deal more in costs as well. Sometimes these costs are considerable. Sometimes they are prohibitive. Let us consider a few of these costs. Some have been referred to, but I will just reiterate again.
There are expenses for pre-adoption home study undertaken by a couple hoping to adopt. That first base is as far as some of them may get because of the rigours of the whole process. There might be agency fees involved in private adoptions. Even in public adoptions where provinces have traditionally covered expenses relating to adoption, we are now seeing adoptive parents faced with new fees and ever increasing costs.
There might be costs for counselling for the birth parents who must grieve the loss of the baby if the child to be adopted is an infant, or in the case of a mother who is giving up her baby.
For international adoptions my Bloc colleague noted considerable travel expenses, transportation, meals, lodging and other expenses related to the child's immigration into Canada.
Then there are the judicial expenses. We know that lawyers are not cheap. There is the adoption order, whether it is a Canadian one or a foreign one. On top of that, international adoption orders may require that the couple obtain a recognition order in Canada as well so that the foreign adoption order will have the same force and effect as a Canadian adoption order.
This means that some couples will have two judicial expenses, one in each country. Let us not forget the legal fees that will change hands if there are several lawyers involved in the whole process. I think hon. members get the idea that significant amounts of money can change hands in an adoption, especially in the case of private and international adoptions.
The province of Quebec estimates that the average cost of an international adoption is at least $20,000. I believe that it is unacceptable that these expenses are not tax deductible. What is unacceptable is that expenses associated with adoptions are paid with after tax dollars. The tax system in my opinion is quite unfair in this regard. It does not provide a tax deduction for adoption expenses, even though it provides tax relief for couples who become parents through means other than adoption, and I will get on to citing some of those.
In other words, the Income Tax Act is unfair in its treatment of new adoptive parents. I want to look at some of the inconsistencies and the unfairness in the Income Tax Act.
First, the Income Tax Act makes provision for parents of children who are born naturally. Such parents have the pre-natal and post-natal costs of having a child covered under medicare across our country. Adoptive parents, however, do not have either the direct assistance of public funds or even the direct assistance of a tax break, as we are talking about here today. While society pays for the cost of a parent's birthing of a child, an adoptive parent has to pay for the entire cost of adopting a child.
Second, as was said before but I think bears repeating just to show the unfairness or the inequity, the Income Tax Act makes provision for parents whose children are conceived and born as a result of fertility treatments which are tax deductible. According to the Library of Parliament, fertility treatment expenses are eligible for the existing 17% federal tax credit for medical expenses provided for in section 118.2 of the Income Tax Act.
Thus it could be argued that among those taxpayers who are unable to have children naturally, the current tax law favours those who seek fertility treatment over those who adopt. Yet it could be said that adoption is more socially beneficial since it aims to provide a family for children who already exist.
It is inherently unfair for expenses related to in vitro fertilization to be tax deductible while adoption expenses are not tax deductible as things stand. There is really no logical reason for it. There is no consistency at all in its approach.
Third, the Income Tax Act does allow parents to deduct child care expenses. My colleague referred to that. It does not distinguish between adoptive parents and parents who have given birth naturally, or between adoptive parents and couples who have used fertility treatments. They all are allowed that expense under the Income Tax Act.
All parents who use day care receive the deduction. There is another matter of parents who provide care at home and are not given the deduction, which is unfair, but that is another matter for another date.
Therefore it is inconsistent for the government to treat adoptive parents and natural parents the same when it comes to the costs involved in parenting by way of the deduction for child care expenses, yet differently when it comes to the costs involved in becoming parents. I think my colleague, in weighing the logic, is thinking he can understand that there is an inconsistency in that whole approach.
There is no justification for this inequity since new parents contribute equally to society regardless of how they become parents, whether by adoption, whether biologically or whether by in vitro fertilization.
If there were a good reason for this unfair treatment then perhaps we could justify it, but there is no reason. No reason exists. New parents contribute equally to society regardless of how they become parents. A child, its needs and its potential for contributing to society are the same, whether there has been an adoption, in vitro fertilization or a natural birth.
Therefore the logic would suggest that a tax deduction for adoption expenses makes as much sense as medicare spending in maternity wards and as much sense as the current tax deduction for infertility treatments.
Let us think of the benefits of adoptions to society. Children who would otherwise grow up without parents gain parents to love them, discipline them and teach them, parents committed to them for the long term. The likelihood of positive outcomes for such children would be much greater. It translates into better physical and mental health, better grades in school, and a greater contribution as adults in the workplace and in the community.
Parents who adopt love their children. They make deliberate choices and deliberate sacrifices. Adoption is a positive thing for society and it makes sense to encourage adoption by use of a tax deduction.
What loss is there to government tax revenues? Not very much at all. In fact public coffers would be offset by reduced government expenditures in several ways. It costs money for the state to provide care for unadopted children. Adoptions therefore save taxpayer money as the new parents assume financial responsibility for the children. There would be reduced mental health costs, criminal justice system costs and prison system costs.
There would also be increased sales tax revenues from the parents spending on adopted children. Once grown, those children would be healthy, contributing members of society who would pay taxes themselves.
This is an important bill. I would move at this point that it be made votable by unanimous consent of the House.