Mr. Speaker, I want to commend the hon. member for his efforts in presenting Bill C-246. It puts us all in a bit of a conflict as a result of a natural response to this deduction. What the bill actually asks for is $7,000 for child adoption expenses.
I must confess to a personal conflict here. I am the father of five children. My oldest child is adopted. I have two stepchildren and two children by other means shall we say. I am kind of the quintessential Canadian family of hers, mine and ours. This goes in part to my argument here. I am not sure how I would preference one child over the other.
Clearly, the day that my wife and I adopted our oldest son, who is now 23, when he was three or four days old, was easily one of the high days of my life. I am extraordinarily proud of him. In fact, he was here with me on break week. He is a student at the University of Toronto and this is study week. I cannot imagine loving him more. I am extraordinarily proud of my adopted son.
However I do have some difficulties with the bill. I want to share those difficulties with members and open up the debate a little bit more.
I want to commend adoptive parents generally for their willingness to take children in and raise them as their own. It is truly an extraordinary experience. I would heartily recommend it to people who are thinking along those lines. However I also know there is travail and there are expenses associated with adoption.
I am absolutely convinced of the hon. member's best intentions in bringing the bill forward but I think I have the unhappy task of raising some of the concerns that would normally arise when we are considering a proposal such as this, which is $7,000 for expenses specifically related to adoption.
I know members will recall the happy day on which the House passed the Canada child tax benefit, which was a landmark bill for Canadian families. It was one of the first post-deficit initiatives of the government and one that has almost taken on a life of its own. At this point, 3.2 million families benefit from the program, representing something in the order of about 5.7 million children, which, by anyone's standards, is a significant number of people affected by the initiative of the House and the government.
Initially it started out as a $9 billion program and then, with the enhancements in the last budget of about $150 per child starting in July 2003 and further increases in July 2005 and 2006, the government will have enriched the program to the tune of almost an additional billion dollars by 2007.
Members will also recall that these changes, along with the five year tax reduction plan, effectively mean that there will be an annual benefit for the first child in July 2004 of $2,719, and is projected to reach $3,243 by 2007. Again, that is a substantial benefit to Canadian families. I would emphasize the point that it is all Canadian families, whether their children arrive by means of adoption, by birth or simply arrive in the home by other means.
To be sure, total support for families will have more than doubled between 1996 and 2007. As I said earlier, this program is projected to reach $10 billion.
I know hon. members will appreciate that educating children is extraordinarily expensive these days. I have one child at the University of Toronto studying philosophy and physics and I have another child at the University of Windsor studying arts. I am anticipating another child will be going to a private school. I have more than a personal experience with trying to find post-tax dollars for the expenses that are involved in raising children.
I take advantage of the registered education savings plan, and I encourage others to do so. I suggest to those who are listening to look that up on the website. It is a pretty significant initiative on the part of the government.
I will now turn to Bill C-246. The problem with C-246 is that it kind of runs into a public policy wall of the government trying to not make preferences among classes of families.
As I indicated, I appreciate that there are various personal expenses incurred when one adopts. I have incurred those expenses myself. There are fees for agencies, sometimes for lawyers, travel expenses, home visits, et cetera. All of those are significant expenses. Equally though, a family that births a child has a unique set of expenses as well, not necessarily shared by an adoptive family. Again, I have been on that side of the equation.
It would not be fair to ask taxpayers at large to pay for the tax relief for a specific set of personal expenses of others. The Government of Canada should not be in the business of making distinctions among families and the choices that they make. A child is a child is a child.
At issue here is that some adoption expenses are in fact discretionary expenses, just as other child expenses are discretionary. If the bill were to go through, an adoptive parent would have possible discretionary expenses that would not necessarily be available to parents who acquire their children by means other than adoption.
It is true that adoptive parents do sometimes incur significant costs. I have heard the stories, much like the hon. member opposite, of trips to China and various other places, which are particularly expensive, but so also do other parents incur significant costs. The example of in vitro fertilization was raised and we do recognize a particular medical expense for that procedure. There are other examples of expenses in reproductive technologies that, frankly, are not recognized. Again, how does the Government of Canada preference one family over another?
Quite simply, some adoptions are quite expensive while others are not. Similarly, some family pregnancies are quite expensive while others are not. The Government of Canada, again, should not be in the business of giving preference to one family over another.
Indeed, other children arrive in families by various means, whether they are adopted or they are birthed, and they become children in the family, yet their expenses are not necessarily recognized. It follows then that we should not expect or ask Canadians to finance these types of personal and discretionary expenses through their tax dollars.
It is virtually impossible to separate discretionary and non-discretionary elements of the costs associated with raising children. There is also considerable variation in the amount that different families devote to their children, even at similar income levels.
In consideration of these variations and the amounts devoted to children, support for children is generally provided as a pre-determined benefit. In other words, the way the Government of Canada approaches children, generally, is that a child is a child is a child, a family is a family is a family, and the Canadian child tax benefit is available to all. Therefore, whether it is at the $2,000 level or the $3,000 level, it is available to all, but we do not, as a matter of policy, make distinctions whether a child is adopted or whether a child is acquired by other means.
The government recognizes that parents should receive financial assistance to help ensure that their needs are met. I believe and I hope I have at least demonstrated that the government places a high priority on investing in children. However it would not be appropriate to ask taxpayers at large to subsidize adoption expenses through the tax system in preference to others.
Regrettably, I must urge hon. members not to support this initiative. Nevertheless, I want to commend the hon. member for bringing forward this bill because it does face us squarely with some difficulties that are in the system.
However, as I said, a child is a child is a child. From the government's standpoint, we must treat all families equally.