National Day care

National Day-care?
What About Ending Family Tax Discrimination?

Ottawa - Today, Eric Lowther, the Children and Family policy critic for the Official Opposition, said the federal government should be fixing the problem of taxation of low-income families, high family taxation, and family tax discrimination instead of talking about new spending programs like national day-care.

"Recent reports indicate that the federal government wants to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a national day-care program.  This is the wrong approach.  It says Ottawa will make a choice for parents rather than giving freedom for a range of child care choices. The best contribution the federal government can make is to stop taxing low-income families making less than $20,000 per year to the tune of $6 billion," Lowther said.

Media reports have indicated that Human Resources Minister Jane Stewart may offer a half a billion dollars per year for day-care and other programs during upcoming meetings with the provinces.

"The provinces should be suspicious of any cost sharing program offered by this government, given the shoddy Liberal record in joint funding of areas like health care and federal intrusiveness in the Millennium Scholarships Fund.  Past experience has shown that cookie-cutter approaches from Ottawa or money offers with strings attached from the federal government have not served Canadian families well," Lowther said.

"The first thing that the federal government should do is to leave the money and the childcare choices with the parents, where they belong.  The Canadian Alliance Solution 17 proposal would do just that by increasing basic and spousal deductions to $10,000, and offering a $3,000 per child tax deduction to all parents," Lowther continued.

"If the federal government has some money burning a hole in its pocket, they should restore the healthcare transfers to the provinces that they have slashed since 1993.  Then, when children and parents are sick, they would be able to get the best treatment possible.  That would be an agenda that would respect Canadian children and families," Lowther concluded.

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