Mr. Speaker, it is a real pleasure to rise in support of today's motion. I cannot stress enough how proud I am to be a member of a party that upholds the traditional place of the family in society as the most important institution in society, period. It is absolutely the most important institution in society. That is why I am just thrilled to be standing in support of today's motion.
I will start by talking about the tremendous importance of families for a moment. I heard my hon. colleague from St. Albert talk about his personal situation. There is no question that the family is the institution which people rely on overwhelmingly to supply their children with values. Rather obviously, people need to have good, strong values of some kind in order to be good citizens and contribute to society. These values come from families.
Families are needed to provide education. I was on the finance committee and people from the various groups promoting literacy were there. I made the argument that the most effective, the best and the most cost efficient institution for providing education in this country is the family. Only a family can really instil the joy of learning. Only a family can provide all that knowledge that people do not necessarily get through their schools. The literacy groups made the point that the people who do learn in schools are the ones who get a good grounding in education from their own families. It is vital for education that we have strong families.
Families provide security for their members. When people for some reason are thrown out of work, the best place for them to go, initially at least, should be their families. That is where they not only get monetary support and other resources but they also get the moral support they need in a situation like that.
Finally, families provide roots so that people can become part of a larger community which really contributes to their sense of well-being and their sense of purpose in life. If people are part of a strong family and therefore part of a stronger community, they feel that their life really does have a sense of meaning and a sense of purpose. It is vital that we have strong families just for that reason alone.
I want to make the argument that families do not get the recognition they deserve. If we were able to put a monetary value on what families contribute to society, it would certainly be a lot more than what governments at all levels put in in terms of trying to support families. There is no question that people today in families no matter how we describe them put a tremendous amount of value back into society. We must do whatever we can to ensure that those families are supported, that they prosper and that the children who come from those families go on to be productive citizens in society.
It is clear that today's families are under a tremendous amount of stress. The hon. member for St. Albert spoke about the broken families. Sociologists and psychologists have pointed to the negative impact of broken families. One of the reasons there are broken families today is that there is so much stress due to the fact that people's finances are tight. People have to work night and day. Both parents often have to work night and day just to bring home enough money to provide the basic necessities of life.
Here is how it works: People make their income; the finance minister gets half and then mom, dad and the kids get the other half to live on. The finance minister gets half the bowl of porridge and mom, dad and the kids get to share the other half of the bowl of porridge. Unfortunately in September, 6,500 Canadians went bankrupt; they could no longer live on that half a bowl of porridge. That is one of the big stresses on families today.
As a result of having to work all day and in some cases six and seven days a week, people simply do not have the time to spend with their children. I know they regret that very much. I regret how much time I have to be away from my family to do this job. It means that I cannot devote the time I would like to to be with my children, to do some of the things I have talked about: to provide them with the education that can only come from families; to give them a sense that they are part of a larger group, a part of a community and a tradition and a history in our own family; to give them the security by talking about the big safety net that a family provides. And of course we have to instil values.
All of that takes time. People come home after working all day and they are tired. It is extremely tempting to sit children in front of the electronic babysitter, the TV. It is not a replacement for people who actually give their children guidance. The family is under stress today.
I mentioned a minute ago all the debt which people are carrying. There were 6,500 bankruptcies in September, a 20 per cent increase. This country has record high levels of personal debt. Again people feel that they have to go out and work and work and work to try to pay down their debt.
As a result of the high taxes not only do we have personal debt at record levels and not only do we have all those bankruptcies, we have tremendously high levels of unemployment. Unemployment is about 10 per cent right now in Canada. That does not include the half a million people who have given up completely looking for work. It does not include the one in four people who are constantly worried about being able to find a job. Because of high taxes this country has a real problem with high unemployment.
We have unfair taxation policies. Not only do we have high taxes which are unfair, but we have taxation policies that encourage and have incentives for people to spend even less time with their children. Families are rewarded for having their children brought up outside the home as opposed to being rewarded for bringing them up at home where a lot of people would like to do it.
About a year ago in a Maclean's magazine poll about 70 per cent of Canadian families where both parents were working said that, given their druthers, they would have one parent at home. Seventy per cent. We are not talking about a minority. We are talking about a majority of families who have both parents working today who would like to have the option.
The facts are clear. When families have a tax burden that constitutes 46 per cent of their income, about half of their income, it is almost impossible for many families, especially low income families, to have one parent at home to spend time with their children. It makes it virtually impossible and it is getting worse.
In the last three years, since 1993, we have seen that families have been left with $3,000 per family less in purchasing power than when this government came into office. That is $3,000 a family. It makes it virtually impossible for people who are struggling to get ahead to be able to ever hope to spend more time with their children at home, especially in those early years when the guidance of the parents is so needed. Obviously there is a huge problem in this country.
I have heard government members today say that they have done this and they have given them that and they have done this for families. It is not enough. The problem also is that it comes at it from a bureaucratic, big government point of view. The government is saying that it has decided it will give back to parents money in such and such a form if they conform to such and such a behaviour. That is not right.
Families make a lot better decisions about how to spend their own money and about how to raise their own children than a big bureaucratic bloated government will ever do. Most people agree with that. It is time to shrink the size of government. It is time that we gave taxpayers and families more money in their pockets to decide what to do with their children, to decide how to raise their own children.
That is what the Reform Party fresh start for families is all about. That is what today's motion is all about. We want to give Canadian families that choice. They want that choice. We are not saying that both parents cannot go out to work. Of course they can.
In my own situation, for years my wife worked in the workforce along with me. It is not that we particularly wanted to have it that way but that is how it worked for a number of years, because we wanted to try to get ahead. People should always have that option, absolutely.
We are not saying they should not have that option. But we are saying that they should also have the option to stay home with their children. We are just asking that people have some freedom.
I heard the hon. parliamentary secretary for finance say that the Reform Party wants the Ozzie and Harriet approach to child care. That is a strawman and let us knock it down right now. What the hon. member is worried about is that this motion is striking a chord with Canadians. He knows how stressed out families are today. He knows that people want to have some options. He knows that people want to have the choice of being able to raise their families the way they decide, not the way the hon. parliamentary secretary, the finance minister, the government, the bureaucracy or a bunch of special interest groups decides. Give families the ability, the freedom to raise children as they choose. The best way to do that is to leave more money in the pockets of those ordinary Canadians who just want government to leave them alone.
The question has been raised about how that can happen. How can that be done? The deficit is $28.6 billion right now. In fact, the government is going to add about $107 billion to the total debt by the time its mandate is done. So far it has already added to the personal tax burden of Canadians approximately $3,000 per family.
What can we do when there is a deficit situation like that? We have said that we would balance the budget and we would run surpluses. We would shrink the size of government, get rid of all the ridiculous spending. We do not need to spend money on Bombardier. We need to spend it on families. We need to spend it on health care. We do not need to spend it on CBC television. We need to spend that money on families to ensure that people get to keep more money in their own pockets.
Our fresh start for families allows people to keep $2,000 per family by the year 2000. That is a great start. It gives people some hope that they will have the opportunity, if they so choose, to stay at home with their children so that they can provide them the guidance, education and the protection that many Canadian families want today.
