Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to talk about this. If there is anything that I value, it is my family, my wife and my children, and of course, I value very highly the solid family that I grew up in.
I grew up in days when there were very few child care spaces. It was just a fact of our generation. In those days, mostly the men, but sometimes the women, would go out and earn the living while the other one stayed home to look after the children. I am happy to tell members that all of our children so far, who have given us grandchildren, have chosen that same route, where there will be, for the sake of the children, a full time parent at home. I think this is wonderful.
I think that Canadians across this country, if they stopped to think about it, would say that we should provide help for people who need help looking after their children, but that we should give them a choice in what kind of help they need. In many cases, they would forgo a second salary in order to give the very best assistance and best training, and best care for their children by having one of the parents at home. I think that Canadians should have a choice and that is what our party would support.
There are many people across this country who live far away from these so-called institutionalized day care centres. They would not have access to them, but they would still have to pay the taxes to fund them. There are many people who choose not to.
If I may, I would like to give a personal example. It just so happens that my wife and I sort of adopted a family that lives just a couple of miles from our house. My wife, by the time our kids were gone from home, was well trained in child rearing. We raised three perfect kids, so she had the credentials. She had no degree, but there they were, three perfect children. She got a job with this family we adopted and she became their live-in day care helper and basically helped that mother raise her three children. There was no institutional day care. My wife did not have a degree. She did not have any formal credentials. However, I will tell members that she was the most qualified person in the world to give good, loving care to those children.
I do not see any reason in the world why we should force more families to leave their children at home, for both spouses to go out and work to earn money to pay an ever increasing tax bill, and not give them the choice on what kind of care they could have for their children if that is a necessity.
Even beyond that, I think it is atrocious that nowadays almost all families have a requirement for both spouses to work because of the fact, as all studies show, that half of every family's income goes to taxes at all the different levels anyway. In other words, when the second parent goes out to work, usually it is simply to help pay all the taxes that are there. If we could have some meaningful tax reductions for families, then of course that would open up a whole new level of choices.
The Liberal government is so wrong in the approach that it is using here. It is unfortunate that it is taking away from parents their right to make choices on the most valuable thing that they have, and that is their children.
I have often said that I can choose which place I go to get my car repaired. Why can I not choose who is going to look after my children and why can I not have that choice made by me, in a country as rich as ours?