Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to Bill C-246. It takes me back to my earlier period as a lawyer when I practised family law almost exclusively and handled a fair number of private adoptions during that period of time.
The NDP supports the bill that has been put forward. It is a further attempt by this legislature to acknowledge the role that adoption plays in Canada.
Adoption is a relatively new phenomena in the last 40 to 50 years. It is interesting to note when we look at the opinion polls that adoption has become highly accepted and has moved up toward the 80 percentile. We would not have found that 50 years ago. Adoption has become an accepted form of developing families in Canadian society.
Bill C-246 attempts to treat, in a tax advantage aspect, biological parents and adoptive parents in an equal fashion. It would recognize that there are different expenses and that society should subsidize those expenses, depending on how a child is brought into the family, whether biologically or by adoption. We provide medical benefits for mothers who are pregnant and we do not expect them to pay for those medicare services. Society subsidizes that family. Bill C-246 would do the same thing for adoptive parents.
I heard the comment from one of our Liberal colleagues about the number of adoptive parents who are adopting babies as opposed to adopting older children. They cannot have children biologically, but may have gone through great expense in their attempts to have biological children. They have already incurred a substantial amount of expense. The bill would assist them to start a family by providing them with some tax relief.
It is worth nothing that this tax relief is not only for those parents who are adopting babies. It would also extend to parents who are adopting family members such as nephews and nieces or maybe children of close friends who have died in some tragedy.
I am thinking of a case that came through my office recently involving friends of mine. There was an earthquake in Egypt and both parents were killed. There were three children in the family who were in their mid and late adolescence. The children happened to be visiting their grandmother in Egypt that day. Both parents were in the house when it collapsed. The grandmother was not capable of taking care of the children. The remaining family members living in Canada who were Canadian citizens were kind enough and responsible enough to take on that responsibility. However, this was a financial burden for them. They had three children of their own and instantly doubled their family in a very traumatic.
The type of tax relief provided in Bill C-246 would have certainly helped this family. It would not have resolved all of their financial difficulties, but it would have helped. I can repeat these kinds of stories.
These families reached out, oftentimes in a traumatic situation, and took on additional responsibility. That is something society should applaud. We should see what we can do to help them. This bill would go some distance to accomplishing that assistance.
I want to make another point. Speaking from my own experience, I can attest to how expensive adoption is, whether it is done inside Canada or outside Canada. I know how much the legal fees are; I know how much the legal process costs. I know what the home studies cost. Psychologists or social workers are brought in to assess the family in a home situation to determine whether it would be appropriate for the family to adopt a child. All of that costs money.
In addition, if the child is being adopted from outside the country, the adoptive parents will have expenses in the other country. Oftentimes they have very substantial travel and accommodation expenses when they move into the other country to pick up the child and bring the child back to Canada.
The $7,000 deduction proposed under Bill C-246 is a very modest amount compared to what it costs most families, particularly for adoptions that take place outside Canada, especially overseas. The $7,000 is a very small proportion, and is probably in the range of 25% to 35% of what it would actually cost a family to adopt a child.
I congratulate the member from the Conservative Party who has brought the bill forward at this time. It has been brought forward on other occasions and the legislature has not seen fit to adopt it into law. We hope we will see a different pattern as a result of his ongoing encouragement to the legislature to pass it into law.