Personal Note before you start Beverley Smith's article.
I am sorry I have not been blogging much, I have had a personal loss and it is taken me time to get over it.
During this time I have noticed that Harper gave income splitting to families with children under 6 and only on the $100 a month.
To me that is an utter joke!
Families are paying the brunt of the tax debt right now, families are paying almost double in taxes if one is childcaring their own child..... and this government has stated we are allowed to income split on $1,200 a year.......
UTTER JOKE!
Beverley Smith: Women and families once again take back seat in federal budget
By Beverley SmithHow often in history have women been told to take a back seat, just for now, and “we’re sure you understand”?
The federal budget is like that. It banks on the good will of the self-effacing to yet again be ignored. While reducing corporate tax and considering jobs the solution to all things economic, it waltzes over children and the elderly with that cute little token pat on the shoulders.
Views on federal budget
Libby Davies: Ideology wins out over good sense in 2010 federal budget
Bill Robinson: Military spending in the federal budget: Up is down?
Elizabeth May: Stephen Harper budget worsens ecological, fiscal, democratic deficits
Ujjal Dosanjh: Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s deficit of hope
Seniors across the country, over two million strong, had been clamoring for an urgent pension summit. Instead they get a Seniors Day and to wave a little flag nationally on April 9’s Vimy Ridge Day. The latter will celebrate men in the war—not women, not unpaid work, but fighting and some time ago. Today’s plight, poverty, will be ignored.
Parents have been asking for a birth bonus as in Australia, for income splitting as in the U.S. and France, for pensions for caregivers as in Italy. They got none of those.
The push to grant universal maternity benefits was not heard either. Even though the greying population puts all budgets in tail spins and we need babies, there is no recognition of the costs of raising a family. The push to have funding flow to the handicapped or dying person needing care was silenced yet again.
We have a replay of old announcements telling us yet again that we get $100 a month till the child is six.
We get tinkering around the edges, not new benefits, not more benefits, but administrivia. Parents who share custody can now share the child tax benefit. It’s not more. It’s just shared now. Military families that qualify for parental leave don’t get more of it, but can simply take it later if one of them has to go to war. Single mothers get no more than before but they can say the child earned it so their tax is slightly reduced.
Big deal.
Instead of returning funding to national advocacy groups for women, to legal action funds, the big rights push of this budget was semantic—to change one word of the national anthem. Hold your hats, for a day or two, it looked like they might change “all thy sons” to “all of us”. Well, that would sure pay the bills and recognize our unpaid work.
They are going to dole out more streams of red tape all the while saying they will reduce it. They will ensure families “have the information they need to make informed choices”. They will “launch a national strategy on childhood injury prevention”. They will look to “innovative charities to partner on new approaches”. Look for those brochures soon in a building near you. Not one dollar to help people but lots more advice.
They will protect children from Internet luring all the while preventing parents from spending more time with the kids. They will ensure youth criminal justice has harsh punishment all the while keeping parents busy in another building earning.
The funding for children will not be “effective, swift and true” but the long arm of criminal justice will be.
They will protect us with more screening on airplanes, a new biometric passport, and will launch a cyber-security strategy, but they won’t help families be there to offer hands-on protection of the sick, handicapped, elderly, or dying. Big Brother will do it.
Yes, this budget took a long time to recalibrate. After all, when you are shooting at families you need sophisticated weapons.
Beverley Smith is a long-time women’s and children’s rights activist, homemaker, and teacher in Calgary who made a successful appeal at the United Nations in 1997 that Canada’s tax, pension, and child-care laws discriminate against some care styles. She currently edits an international newsletter on caregiving.
Labels: Beverley Smith, child care daycare stay at home parents, child care income splitting