RE: FAMILY FRIENDLY TAX POLICY

March 4, 1999

   The value of the full-time homemaker has long been underestimated. Not only has the need for stay at home moms been negated, it has in fact been actively discouraged as an honourable career and opportunity for total fulfilment for women.

   Historically, a woman's role has been caregiver, mother, and homemaker. This was until recently the natural role women filled. Not long ago women only went out to work to supplement the family income. Only a few felt the need for a career, other than the historic one.

   How things have changed. Today women and men compete for the same positions. We have pay equity. There is talk of a glass ceiling. There are also latchkey kids. These are the phenomenons of the nineties. The nineties of "gotta have it all, gotta have it now" thinking.

   The full-time homemaker has now become the full-time career woman, breadwinner, and business traveller. Isn't it time to level the playing field, and reinvent some traditions of days gone by? Can't family values be put a little higher on the political agendas of those who formulate, adopt, and implement policy?

   Many women or men, one of the partners in a traditional family, would be a full-time homemaker, if it wasn't for the fiscal penalties they face. Canada's Tax Laws need to be changed to encourage and enable full-time homemakers to be just that, full-time. We need to recognize that full-time makers make a definite, valuable contribution to society. It may be expected that with full-time stay-at-home moms, society will become a better place.

   No longer will kids be latch key, no they will have a caring parent waiting for them to come home from school, to listen to their stories, to help them with their projects, and to give them attention, and keep an eye on them. Traditional values can be re-instilled in a generation that presently grows up on a steady diet of Soaps and Sit-coms.

   Society needs to put tax legislation in place that makes staying home attractive. Not only may we expect a better society to be the result, we may also expect that positions presently filled by then full-time homemakers will create employment opportunities for the thousands of the generation Xers.

   How long would stay-at-homes be at home? Until the youngest child has reached the age of responsibility, sixteen.

   Our Tax System needs to be revised. No family should be penalized because they want to spend more time on the rearing of their offspring, from which all of society will benefit.

   Hans Vander Stoep, Executive Director
Canadian Christian Business Federation