Mr. Speaker, I welcome the opportunity to support my colleague from Prince George--Peace River on his private member's bill. I think it is a worthwhile cause.
As my colleague from Lethbridge suggested, it is perhaps not often that our party advocates this kind of piecemeal tax relief, but on the other hand, this particular bill fits very well with our longstanding commitment of supporting families and doing what we can to help families.
Certainly, we support adoption and helping parents who, because of rising infertility rates or whatever the reasons might be, are not able to have a family of their own, and choose to adopt. There is all kind of evidence and studies to show that a child growing up in a strong, loving environment produces the best results, not only for the child, but for society in general.
I am a parent and know well the joy and pride that we take as parents in raising children, watching them succeed, and turning out well and being contributing members of society. It is appropriate that we, as a government, support as many children as possible, be it children in Canada or children from around the world, by taking them out of sometimes very difficult and unproductive circumstances and putting them into loving families. Anything we can do to help that happen must be positive.
It is just sheer coincidence that there happens to be a lengthy article today in the Ottawa Citizen dealing with this issue. The Ontario Liberal government is moving to increase the number of Ontario orphaned and abandoned children being adopted. Its goal is to increase crown ward adoptions by 15%.
Quite frankly, the federal Liberal government could do much to help that initiative of the Ontario government by passing this bill and providing this help. The vast majority of couples looking to adopt children are younger couples, in their twenties, thirties and forties, who want to have a family and at the same time are establishing their careers. They are probably buying homes and generally getting established. Therefore, the outrageous costs of some $10,000 to $15,000 for a domestic adoption and $20,000 to $30,000 for an international adoption is pretty daunting to those kinds of families. We could certainly do a lot to help them.
It is unfortunate, and I do not think there is any way to avoid it, but the process of adopting, both the process of putting a child up for adoption and the process of adopting a child, are legal processes. I do not think there is any way to avoid that. However, it seems whenever something in today's world becomes a legal process, it also becomes a very expensive process and those costs are pretty prohibitive.
I think it is a great way to go. It is not only the best outcome for society and the child, but it is a cost saver as well. The article in the Ottawa Citizen today quoted the cost of keeping a child as a ward of the state at $40,000 a year. There is a lot to be gained if those children can be put up for adoption more quickly and the process speeded up. The costs to those parents would be somewhat reduced through this tax benefit of up to $7,000, based on a percentage of the costs incurred.
The state could save money as well. There is also an issue of fairness because the process of having children and raising one's own children is subsidized by the state. It has been for as long as I can remember. As regrettable as it might be, with 30,000 pregnancies a year, babies that are terminated before birth are also a subsidized process by the state. Surely, with the tremendous benefit that is derived by everybody involved from the adoption process, we can justify the subsidization of the adoption process.
I have had occasion, several times in my 10 years as a member of Parliament, to help parents adopt, both domestically and internationally, with all the red tape and all the roadblocks that are put up. It is a daunting process to enter into as some of my colleagues described. It takes a lot of courage to start that and it takes years and years to go through the process.
We could do a lot of other things to help those parents, to help them through the process and to speed the process up. This is perhaps one part of it, but at least it is something we can do to help others enjoy the experience that we as parents have in raising children and having that pride.
I support the bill enthusiastically and hope the government would look at it from a compassionate point of view and support it as well.