[JaredMilne]

Unsound Unsound:

I'm totally ok with the increases to the child benefit and such, and would be happy if they increased it further rather than bringing in income splitting. I just don't see income splitting as being such a bad thing.

Here's an idea, if we can't do our taxes as a household, how about any subsidies out there be based on individual income as well? Maybe that way we could use my wife's income on forms to get the kids subsidized daycare?

You know, that may not be a bad idea. Of course, there's also the subsidized daycare program the NDP is proposing...

[Unsound]

Obviously the cost of a child care is a major reason my wife only works part time, and cheap daycare would be a godsend, but I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea of making the rest of you pay for my family's choices.

Not to mention the sheer cost of such a program, which developments in Quebec have shown to be less than sustainable, and not neccesarily of real benefit to the families that need help the most.

[andyt]

Same deal as with income splitting - the Quebec childcare program benefits mostly middle income and up. Same with the NDP program - how many low income families can afford $450 a month per child?

I say get rid of the spouse deduction and the income splitting. Then put that money towards kids. You want to go the Reformacon route, just give them the money in cash and they can decide what to do with it. Personally I think it's better just use the tax system than mailing out cheques every month.

But mostly they need to increase the basic personal exemption, to give lower income folks a break, single or married, kids or not. Add another tax bracket on top of the 29% they have now to try to recoup some of that money.

As has been pointed out, one reason low and even low middle income folks in Canada aren't doing so bad is because of the income redistribution system we have. The Cons, being Cons, have been chipping away at that while giving goodies to upper middle and above families.

[JaredMilne]

Unsound Unsound:

Obviously the cost of a child care is a major reason my wife only works part time, and cheap daycare would be a godsend, but I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea of making the rest of you pay for my family's choices.

Not to mention the sheer cost of such a program, which developments in Quebec have shown to be less than sustainable, and not neccesarily of real benefit to the families that need help the most.

I don't have any kids, and I don't plan to have any. However, if you want to get technical I am already paying for your family's choices through the UCCB and the Child Care Tax Credit. These are tax benefits you can get that I don't, and in a way I make up the difference. Same thing with the NDP's daycare program, which I pay for but don't benefit from...but to me that's not a big deal, since in both cases it provides tangible benefits for my fellow Canadians.

Also, it strikes me that we might actually be able to maximize peoples' choices by offering them the UCCB, the Child Care Tax Credit and the national daycare program. That way, parents could choose to use the UCCB to pay their relatives or neighbours to do childcare, or they could go for a universal daycare space, and so forth. Canadians can cherry-pick which benefits they want to go for.

As for Quebec's program, here's what economist Pierre Fortin had to say after studying the issue:

$1:

After 12 years, the Quebec scheme more than pays for itself through mothers’ annual income and consumption taxes, says Pierre Fortin, an economics professor at the University of Quebec at Montreal.

For every dollar Quebec invests, it recoups $1.05 while Ottawa receives a 44-cent windfall, he says.

“The argument can no longer be that governments cannot afford it. This program is paying for itself. It is self-financing. That is the main finding,” says Fortin, who is in Toronto to attend an economic forum on child care at the Ontario Institute for Child Studies.

Quebec introduced publicly funded all-day kindergarten for 5-year-olds in 1997 with $5-a-day after-school care in every school where families requested it.

It began offering $5-a-day daycare for 4-year-olds in 1998. Each year another age was added and by 2000 all children from birth to age 5 were included. The daily parent fee rose to $7 in 2004. About 50 per cent of children under age 5 are enrolled in the program.

By 2008, about 70,000 more women with young children had entered the workforce who would not otherwise have been working, a 3.8 per cent increase, Fortin found. The ripple effect of their employment pumped an additional $5.2 billion into the Quebec economy, boosting the province’s Gross Domestic Product by 1.7 per cent.

The increased economic activity, which includes mothers’ income and consumption taxes, more than covered the province’s $1.6 billion annual child-care costs that year. (The province subsidizes each spot by about $10,000 annually.) And it poured more than $700 million in additional revenue into federal coffers.

If a similar program existed in Ontario, it would send another $1.2 billion to $1.3 billion to Ottawa, Fortin estimates.

“It’s money the federal government gets free,” Fortin says. “This is why we say the federal government should make a contribution to Ontario and other provinces.”

Previous cost-benefit studies of Quebec’s $7-a-day daycare looked only at mothers’ income taxes and lower government transfers and pegged the benefits at 40 cents for every dollar spent, Fortin says.

But those studies neglected to include the economic impact of working mothers’ increased purchasing power, including increased consumption taxes, investment and corporate taxes, he says.

And here's what the Canada 2020 think tank had to say on the issue...

$1:

A number of studies have documented the lasting cognitive gains for children who experienced high-quality childcare. For example, an American study by Ramey and Ramey analyzed the effects of childcare participation when children from low-income families reached the age of 21. Results indicated that those who received out-of-home childcare performed better on reading and math assessments, and almost 70 percent of those who participated in early childhood programs were now engaged in skilled jobs or enrolled in higher education, in contrast to only 40 percent of those in the control group. Further, the study found that children enrolled in childcare were three times more likely to attend a four-year college than control-group children—36 percent versus 12 percent. Attending a post-secondary institution provides more opportunity and better outcomes for children. Positive results are also apparent in Quebec, where increased access to childcare has contributed to its students moving from below the national average on standardized test scores to above it. Overall, a 2012 TD Financial report stated that the return-on-investment rate for children from low-income households receiving some form of childcare is in the double digits, higher than it is for children from high-income families. By universalizing childcare, Canada would ensure that every family has an equal opportunity to receive its benefits

...

Despite extensive research confirming the benefits of a universal childcare program, including its ability to create more equal opportunities and reduce the income gap, universal childcare remains a pipedream in most of Canada. Today, Canada’s childcare system is characterized by an incoherent approach by the federal government compounded by a variety of provincial and territorial models. Canadians have been left with different service levels, no national standards of quality, and a system that does not serve children, families, or society, well. A universal childcare system is effective at equalizing opportunities for two reasons. First, investments offer a bigger return when they target early childhood. Second, the benefits from a universal childcare system are progressive in that they benefit children from lower-income households more than those from high-income households.

[Jonny_C]

JaredMilne JaredMilne:

My own views on the subject are pretty straightforward-I prefer the tax system to be as streamlined as possible with as few loopholes as necessary. I'm all for tax credits, but I think they should be as applicable to as many people as possible, and that they actually achieve something positive besides simply depriving Ottawa of revenues. This is where I feel income splitting for families fails-it won't benefit an especially large part of the population, particularly when we already have more effective measures in place that will achieve the very same thing.

I'm not against other tax reduction measures that could potentially work better. I'm just basically glad to see a new tax reduction measure in place that I think can benefit families. Much rather this than no tax break, or an increase in taxes.

There's some manipulation going on here, but if it makes the gov't happy, I'm happy to see the tax break in place.

$1:

After all, we're all in this together, aren't we?

Seems to me I've heard that somewhere before...

[JaredMilne]

Jonny_C Jonny_C:

I'm not against other tax reduction measures that could potentially work better. I'm just basically glad to see a new tax reduction measure in place that I think can benefit families. Much rather this than no tax break, or an increase in taxes.

I get where you're coming from, Jonny. And I appreciate the respect and consideration you've shown me during this discussion, and I hope that I've shown the same towards you as well.

While you're basically glad to see a new tax reduction measure, I'm basically frustrated at what I see as another measure that makes our national finances increasingly precarious.

I know all too well that I've ripped on the Harper Conservatives on this forum a lot, and I'm not very happy about it. The fact is that I really do appreciate a lot of the work Harper has done in areas like Arctic sovereignty, criminal justice, and otherwise making a lot of useful and worthwhile bread-and-butter changes in various fields. Unfortunately, when it comes to managing the nation's finances I am less than pleased with Harper's performance.

I think that Harper's "surplus" is built on a house of cards, one that involved milking the EI fund, pinning too many of our hopes on oil and gas development while other parts of the economy continue to languish, selling assets and cutting essential frontline services and staff while lying through his goddamn teeth about it. I have no idea how long this can last when there's so much downward pressure on salaries, many of the jobs being created are part-time in nature, stalled oil and gas exportation, we only have so many assets to sell and there's increasing pressure on our infrastructure, public services and our military capabilities. I'm baffled as to where Harper thinks he'll get the money to pay off all the extra debt he's accumulated, not to mention pay for new military procurement, for instance, without us either going back into debt or Harper continuing to break his promises about not balancing the budget on the backs of Canadians.

Tax cuts and credits can be obviously be a very good thing to get things going again. However, it's worth repeating that Preston Manning was blunt the fact that nothing is free, and that we were going to have to give up some of the things we'd come to expect from government if we wanted to right the ship again.

Harper, on the other hand, seems to like to pretend that we can have all the tax cuts we want without ever having to consider giving anything up in terms of services. I know he likes to portray himself as the "steady hand on the tiller", but to me that when it comes to our finances that "steady hand" is looking less like that of Horatio Nelson and more like that of Joseph Hazelwood.

I'm a lot younger than you or bootlegga. My generation is going to inherit this fiscal situation, and I'm not optimistic about the future. I've said before that I think Canada is just treading water in the current situation-and I'm more inclined to hope that we don't sink than expect us to suddenly start swimming.

Jonny_C Jonny_C:

$1:

After all, we're all in this together, aren't we?

Seems to me I've heard that somewhere before...

I've met Steve Smith during both of the times he's performed in Edmonton. I got him to autograph my copies of all seven of his books, as he wryly noted that I'd "brought the whole library".

[Jonny_C]

JaredMilne JaredMilne:

I know all too well that I've ripped on the Harper Conservatives on this forum a lot, and I'm not very happy about it. The fact is that I really do appreciate a lot of the work Harper has done...

Your frame of mind seems to be a lot like mine when it comes to Harper and the Conservatives. Sometimes it seems that he and they are determined to shoot themselves in the foot in such obvious ways that you almost want to scream at them, "What are you thinking?"

Sometimes they're rational and straightforward, sometimes they're so partisan that they reduce themselves to idiots.

Unfortunately, the Liberals can be the same (only they're more "slithery" about it) so having them in power presents a different set of problems.

The NDP... well the NDP will never be more than a distraction.

$1:

I've met Steve Smith during both of the times he's performed in Edmonton. I got him to autograph my copies of all seven of his books, as he wryly noted that I'd "brought the whole library".

Lucky guy. I chuckle and guffaw from afar.

[JaredMilne]

Jonny_C Jonny_C:

Your frame of mind seems to be a lot like mine when it comes to Harper and the Conservatives. Sometimes it seems that he and they are determined to shoot themselves in the foot in such obvious ways that you almost want to scream at them, "What are you thinking?"

Sometimes they're rational and straightforward, sometimes they're so partisan that they reduce themselves to idiots.

Yeah, you've largely summed up my thoughts on the matter. I've disagreed with some of the things guys like Preston Manning and Brent Rathgeber have said, but at the same time I also have a lot of admiration for the former and am a good friend of the latter. In part, this is because they've always come across to me as the kind of guys I could have a passionate debate with one minute, and then spend the next crying into our drinks with as we console each other while watching the Oilers lose.

Compare this to the likes of Stephen Harper and Ezra Levant, who've always come across to me as though they'll hold a grudge against me for the rest of their lives if I were to even question them, much less criticize or disagree with them.