Mr. Speaker, I thank my Liberal colleague from across the way for the question. It is well thought out and it is a good question.
Ultimately, it cannot be reconciled. We have to start somewhere. What I am doing, by putting forward this bill, is recognizing what I believe is a very real need out there. Adoptive parents provide a service, as I have tried to lay out in my remarks, not only obviously to that child or children who they adopt, but to society in general because, as all of us recognize, children are the future of our country.
I also noted in my remarks that some of the expenses attached to procedures like in vitro fertilization are tax deductible, but I readily recognize that the hon. member's comments are accurate and that not all are. In some cases, where people are repeatedly trying every conceivable scientific method to conceive, to have a child naturally, it gets very expensive. I would certainly be willing, as a private member, to look at ways in which we could address that further than the existing tax deductions that are available for those procedures.
As so often is the case in this chamber, I do not want to see the government use things like that, and I am sure the member would not either, as an excuse not to do anything.
I have been here 10 years, a decade. If I say it quickly, it does not seem like a long time, but I have been very frustrated a lot of the times in that 10 years. I have felt that different initiatives, regardless of party or partisan backing, which have come forward should have been supported, and they made good common sense. Too often I have heard the government say that it could not do it because it would open a Pandora's box and others would be lining up with their hands out wanting help.
I do not know what arguments will be used by the government member who will speak tonight against doing this, but if I hear that again tonight, that is sad. To me it is a weak argument to say to all adoptive parents across Canada who are incurring ever increasing costs that we cannot help them out because, if we do we, will have to address some other issue. Let us address each one individually. If the need is there, it is warranted and it makes sense, then let us do it.