KENORA – POLITICS – Bob Nault, Liberal candidate for the Kenora Riding, announced that a re-elected Liberal government will put more money in parents’ pockets to help them in the first year of their children’s lives.
“Taking time off from my career to raise my two children was by far the most important and rewarding time of my life,” stated Nault. “For parents in the North, raising a family isn’t cheap, and the bills pile up early on and they keep piling up with the ever-rising cost of childcare. The fact is when one parent is at home, their income drops, and it take decades to catch up. With everything else on their plate, the last thing new parents need to worry about is making ends meet. Under this plan, we’re going to make sure parents have more money when they need it most.”
A re-elected Liberal government will:
● give up to $1,000 more to families to help when the costs of raising kids are highest by boosting the Canada Child Benefit (CCB) by 15 per cent for children under the age of one;
● make sure families get more money right away, by making maternity and parental benefits tax-free; and
● make paid leave fairer for families, by introducing a 15-week leave for adoptive parents – so they get as much in benefits to care for their kids as everyone else.
These important steps will build toward a long-term vision that helps families when it matters most.
Within the first year of a new mandate, a new Liberal government will work to establish Guaranteed Paid Family leave. This program is to ensure that parents who don’t qualify for paid leave through Employment Insurance, or don’t get enough, because they’re between jobs, will receive a guaranteed income during the first year of their child’s life. Once implemented, single Canadian parents will be in a much better financial position to afford to spend the first year at home with their child.
Since 2015, the Liberal Government has made it a priority to make life easier and more affordable for families:
● We gave more money to nine out of ten families and helped lift 300,000 children from poverty, by creating the CCB;
● We created tens of thousands of new child care spaces across the country, by developing the Early Learning and Child Care
framework;
● We made parental leave more flexible, by allowing parents to spread their time over 18 months; and
● We gave both parents the option to take more time off with their newborn, by adding the five-week parental sharing benefit.
“Conservatives like Andrew Scheer and Doug Ford pretend they are “For the People,” but at the first opportunity, they cut taxes for the wealthiest and then they go out and cut programs and services that families rely on,” concluded Nault.
“To illustrate our ongoing commitment to families, from 2016 to 2018, families in the Kenora riding raising children received $147,533,000 (million) from the Canada Child Benefit – that’s more than $70 million per year. To put this more into perspective, we expect that once we receive total payment information for this benefit year, over $200 million will have been paid directly to families in the Kenora riding. Thanks to the CCB, in 2017-18, 7,970 families in our communities will have received an average yearly payment of $9,270. This will help 16,270 children.
“Cuts that the Conservatives are promising to do won’t work. Northerners need to be there for their families, which is why we’ll be there for them.
“There’s a clear choice in this election, investing in families and children, or cutting childcare spaces as Doug Ford’s Ontario Conservative government has promised to do. As a parent, the choice is clear – I choose to invest in families.”
