Mr. Speaker, I must say that the hon. member for Essex-Windsor has given a detailed response to the motion to which I attach myself very proudly. Her knowledge of this subject is obvious. She has done a tremendous amount of homework studying it.
The Reform motion, on the face of it, is quite compelling. The motion calls for the extension of the child care tax deduction to all families of all income levels and so on. I will forgive the technical glitch. It speaks of a child care tax deduction, but it should speak of something else.
When we examine the motion, the problem is that we begin to ask questions about what the motion really means. If it means, as my hon. friend from Swift Current-Maple Creek-Assiniboia has said, transferring the $5,000 to a tax credit, then it begins to raise even more questions.
My hon. friend from Essex-Windsor asked the question: What would happen if the Reform Party's second chance program were to come into play and more people were taken off the tax rolls? That $5,000 tax credit would be available to people who would not be paying any taxes. What would happen to those people with low incomes?
One could go on to ask a number of questions like that to get into the detail of this motion. While the spirit of the motion may be quite commendable, it is not workable. It is not doable. If the Reform Party were the government of the day-perish the thought-it would be introducing something which would have rather horrendous implications.
My friend from Swift Current-Maple Creek-Assiniboia spoke of certain loans that our government has made recently to various companies. He has attempted to discredit them in the face of the need for adequate financing for children. He referred to the war on poverty. Let me make it very clear that the most effective war on
poverty is employment. When people are working and putting bread on the table, that is the most effective war on poverty.
I would like to respond to the charges about the $87 million which was lent to Bombardier. It is a repayable loan. It was not given to the company. It is a loan which is repayable in royalties when the next new generation of Bombardier aircraft are out on the line, built and flying.
Actually the aerospace industry, as my hon. friend will acknowledge, is one of the greatest exports Canada has at the present time. To bring us into a position where Canada will become the fourth largest manufacturer of aerospace equipment, aircraft particularly, it seems to me that research and development partnerships with industry are a very suitable way to go, especially in they are in the form of repayable loans.
Recently some money was loaned for the further development of the tar sands. It was done on a similar basis. Thirty million dollars was given to a company in Vancouver that is a specialist in fuel cell production. It represents the vanguard of some of the new energy utilization we will have in this country.
The Liberal government has always believed in these kinds of partnerships. This is not done as a handout to industry. It is done in the spirit of investment because this kind of investment pays huge dividends.
The hon. member speaks of income declines in recent years. I wonder if he would pay the same attention to interest rate declines. If someone has a young family at the present time, it is pretty common to have a mortgage on a home. If you go to the bank today to renew your mortgage after five years, you will walk out of there with $3,000 to $4,000 more in your pockets than you had previously. The financial policies of the government have been instrumental in the resulting decline in interest rates-
