[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]
Wednesday, October 23, 1996
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[English]
The Chair: We are proceeding.
Mr. Strahl, did you have some business to deal with before we get going?
Mr. Strahl (Fraser Valley East): If I could, Madam Chairman.
The Chair: Please call me Madam Chair. I don't like to be called Madam Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Strahl: Certainly. I'm used to our own caucus chair, who prefers to be called Madam Chairman. Pardon me for that, Madam Chair.
The Chair: I'm sure she does, but I don't.
Mr. Strahl: Madam Chair, on Monday Mr. Thompson was here and attempted to move a motion in this committee, but was told he could not because he was not a member of the committee. It's understood that the members of the committee can vote, move motions and be part of quorum, and non-members cannot.
However, considering it is the nature of members of Parliament to be out of Ottawa on occasion, or to have commitments in the House and other committees and so on, a procedure is needed to ensure that members and their parties are represented. To do that, substitutes are required, and their parties are represented and must be full participants.
The procedure for this is covered under Standing Order 114, and the relevant section of that standing order reads as follows:
- At any time...the Chief Whip of any recognized party may effect substitutions by filing notice
thereof with the clerk of the committee, having selected the substitutes from among all the
Members of his or her party and/or the independent members listed as associate members of the
committee pursuant to Standing Order 104(4); and such substitutions shall be effective
immediately they are received by the clerk of the committee.
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As the Reform Party whip, I signed the appropriate form. I signed in Mr. Thompson forMr. Hangar. We all expected Standing Order 114 would be enforced, but it was not, and it would appear that in this committee substitutes get only partial authority under Standing Order 114 - the authority to vote and be part of quorum.
I'm told the problem arises from an internal rule of this committee where 48 hours' notice is required to move a motion. So what happens if a member were to fall ill or to have other parliamentary business out of town? This committee's 48-hour rule would impede the absent member from functioning on the committee, and if his or her substitute cannot move a motion, then what is the point of the substitution? The decision of the committee dilutes Standing Order 114. Your internal rules cannot dilute or circumvent a Standing Order.
On June 16, 1994, there was a similar case regarding Standing Order 114 at the aboriginal affairs committee. The parliamentary secretary on this committee was the chairman of that committee at that time, and I'm sure he will remember this well. It was a wonderful evening. He allowed a member who was not legally signed in to move motions, vote and be part of quorum, and although he was aware of the irregularity, he continued to allow the member to participate as a substitute.
The matter was brought to the House the next day by Mr. Harris of our party. Mr. Harris questioned the chair's primary responsibility to ensure that the committee operates under the rules established by the House of Commons - our Standing Orders - and although the Speaker rarely rules on proceedings of the committee, this case was a clear breach of Standing Order 114. In his ruling the Speaker said:
In the matter now before us I must...conclude that this is serious enough to require the intervention of the Chair because it concerns a fundamental right which belongs to the House and not to a committee, namely the right to establish the membership of a committee.
He went further and stated:
While it is a tradition of this House that committees are masters of their own proceedings, they cannot establish procedures which go beyond the powers conferred upon them by the House.
- ...the hon. member for Prince George - Bulkley Valley was absolutely correct...
I understand that Mr. Ramsay will take care of the motion for Mr. Thompson, and I thank the member for that, but that should not be necessary. I applied Standing Order 114 at the request ofMr. Thompson to enable him to move the motion, and we expect this committee to apply and be ruled by the rules of the House and not have them circumvented by internal rules. Madam Chair, I ask that you clarify your ruling and advise this committee how an absent member can send a substitute to a committee to move a motion under these internal rules that you have.
I appeal to this committee to allow a substitute to table and move a motion. This matter must be dealt with now because, as you can see, we have substitutes participating in this committee today and tomorrow. This issue must be resolved. At times people are substituted in for weeks on end if someone is sick or unable to make it.
Thank you for your consideration. I would ask you to clarify that and deal with it today, if you could.
The Chair: Thank you for raising that. I'm not going to ask for any other argument on the motion. I'm going to defer it for today because I want an opportunity to look at what I said yesterday or whenever it was, and to look at the research I've asked the committee clerk to undertake. I had a preliminary opinion from the table just as the matter was raised. I know that Mr. Thompson is an associate member but not a full member of the committee, and I was aware that he was signed in. I thought that might be problematic - not in terms of making a motion where there's no delay, but where we have our 48-hour rule. So I inquired about that and was given a preliminary opinion, upon which I relied.
It's my recollection - I could be dead wrong on this, Mr. Strahl - that I intended to raise the problem with Mr. Thompson to see if we could get around it by having someone else sign the notice of motion. But I may have, in the course of that, said that I was going to rule it out of order. If I did, I did, and I'll give you reasons for that if I can. If I can't, I'll back off. How's that?
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Mr. Strahl: You might need more than one day.
The Chair: I may need six weeks to deal with it. No, I'll try to deal with it as quickly as possible. As you know, we're sitting ad nauseam this week, so I should be able to come up with something before the end of the week.
Mr. Strahl: Okay. And you'll report it back to the committee and then -
The Chair: Oh, yes. I'll make the ruling at committee, and we'll give you notice, sure.
Mr. Strahl: Okay. Thank you.
Mr. Kirkby (Prince Albert - Churchill River): And if you don't, we'll go all night Thursday on clause-by-clause.
Mr. Strahl: Thank you, Madam Chair.
The Chair: Thanks for raising that.
Mr. Kirkby: Thanks for raising the precedent there, Chuck. I'd forgotten about it.
The Chair: Okay. Let's get back to the business at hand, because we don't have a lot of time, and we have a vote this afternoon.
We have in front of us Professor Ross Finnie of the School of Public Administration of Carleton University.
We're dealing with Bill C-41, which is an act to amend the Divorce Act, the Family Orders and Agreements Enforcement Assistance Act, the Garnishment, Attachment and Pension Diversion Act and the Canada Shipping Act.
Professor Finnie, I know you have a brief. Are you representing the Caledon Institute of Social Policy, Carleton University or yourself?
Professor Ross Finnie (School of Public Administration, Carleton University): I've written a number of materials on child support and divorce over the years, and I was invited by the committee to appear.
The Chair: I appreciate that, but your document is from the Caledon Institute of Social Policy. I want to know if you're representing them today, or if you're representing yourself.
Prof. Finnie: I guess I represent myself as a professor in the School of Public Administration.
The Chair: Okay. We'll have questions after.
Prof. Finnie: Good. I should take 10 or 15 minutes.
The Chair: Whatever you need. Keep in mind the timeframe. We like to have 10-minute shots at the questions, so we'll need about a half an hour.
Prof. Finnie: Okay, fair enough. I'd like to leave lots of room. On the other hand, I'll take a few minutes, 10 to 15 minutes, to give an overview.
The Chair: Please.
Prof. Finnie: Here's my background on this. Six or seven years ago, I started doing research on the income changes that occurred at divorce for men and women. The findings were quite original in the sense that I was actually able to track what happened to people at the point of divorce in a way that no one had ever been able to in Canada before.
The Department of Justice asked me to get involved with research on developing child support guidelines. So that is how I came to be involved in this area.
Then, as an academic, I became interested in the subject of child support guidelines per se. I did my doctorate at the University of Wisconsin, which is where guidelines were originally developed in North America. I came from a heritage with some interest in that, and I plunged into it.
Subsequently, I wrote a book on child support guidelines. I had a paper in a book last year from the C.D. Howe Institute, which was their social policy on the family. It was an article on divorce. I've written a number of scholarly articles. So I've been thinking about this stuff for a while.
I don't come to you representing any group. I don't represent one side or the other. I'm just someone who has studied the problem and is interested in public policy. That's my perspective today.
The Chair: I can tell you that for somebody who doesn't represent any side, you're sure quoted a lot by one of them.
Prof. Finnie: I get flak from all sides, and I get quoted from all sides.
The Chair: Okay. I just thought you'd be interested in knowing that we heard about you a lot last night.
Prof. Finnie: Is that right?
The Chair: We heard about your views, too.
Prof. Finnie: Which side was that? I'm sorry, I'm not in tune with the committee.
The Chair: Fathers groups that were here last night were quoting you quite a bit.
Prof. Finnie: I'm pleased they were able to find useful things to say.
The Chair: As long as they spell your name correctly.
Prof. Finnie: I don't really care.
The Chair: Sorry, Professor Finnie. You go ahead.
Prof. Finnie: Okay. No, it's nice to know how one's work does get used. On the other hand, I'm a basic supporter of the guidelines. In fact, let's start with that.
The conclusion in the book is that, yes, I believe in child support guidelines. I helped build the guideline that is part of the committee today. So I believe in guidelines for the reasons I think we all understand.
What I see is that some things have been added. I was a co-author of a document that is an overview of the research program to develop a Canadian child support formula. I had a lot to do with the construction of this guideline. However, between this and the bill you have here, there were things added and left out, which I see would cause problems in people's lives. This is true for men, for women, for children. So what I'd like to do is point out how I see those problems, and offer solutions in every case. They would be pretty simple, straightforward solutions. Hopefully then I would put into place a guideline that will not catch people by surprise, unpleasantly surprise them and, I would say, actually cause -
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For example, there is the case in England. When the thing actually came on line, it did not go away and politically it's still an albatross around the government's neck.
That is to say the guideline is the opportunity to institute a very good policy. It's going to help people get through divorce, it's going to help children, and it's going to help non-custodial parents. Therefore, I think it's important to get the job done right. That's what I'm going to be talking about here today.
I'll go through a very brief description of how I see the guideline. The majority of my comments will be on the problems with the structure of the guidelines themselves, four or five major points on this. Then I'll briefly talk, but only briefly, about the tax treatment. I'm sure most people know everything they need to know about that. And then I'll talk a little bit about some overall conclusions.
Most of my comments will be on the structure of the guidelines themselves and how they will affect individuals, in the sense of equity between different custodial and non-custodial parents and for the couple, in terms of providing for the child, and in terms of implementation, which I think is often an issue that's not given enough regard on this and is something that will work over time.
As you know, the arguments basically in favour of guidelines are, first of all, that they can reduce arbitrary variation. Everyone knows about that one: different judges, different courts. People in similar situations wind up with radically different awards. That's fundamentally unfair, there's no question.
By the way, I'm basically going to work through this document, which I think you've all had a copy of. I have other copies, if anyone should need one, or want to distribute to friends, relatives, whatever. They're free to me, they're free to you. I don't make any money on it. I don't make money on any of this stuff. I'm just spreading the word to the degree it's useful.
First of all, reduce arbitrary differences in awards across cases, judges, etc.
Second, guidelines can make sure that not just the distribution across different situations but the level of awards can accurately reflect the true costs of raising a child, and in the past that probably has not been the case.
Third, a guideline can fix inequities across income levels. That is to say, for people at higher income levels and lower income levels, in terms of the awards, are there glass ceilings, are there glass floors? A guideline can come in and make sure that there is equity across different income levels, for both sides of the problem.
Fourth, a guideline can allow better planning. People can look to the future. If I get divorced, this is basically what I'm looking at.
Finally, related to that, guidelines can reduce the costs of divorce.
So guidelines look pretty good on paper, and in fact these are the major strengths. In the end, I come down in support of guidelines. However, we shouldn't be carried away into thinking any guideline is going to be a good guideline. It depends on the details. It depends on the basic principle, the basic structure, but then also in the details; and that's where I think an overall evaluation of the one that's before you -
I helped construct it. I think the basic guideline is actually quite good. The underlying principles I think are fair in terms of its being based on a fair sharing of the costs of the children. It would be efficient and relatively easy to understand because of its simplicity, just being based on the non-custodial parent's income. So it would be fair, efficient, and it could be fairly easily understood.
So the basic guideline I think is good. That's what we talk about here, one of the co-authors of which, from the Department of Justice, is in this room here today.
Now let me get on to what I see has been the problems with the guidelines. Again, I will follow my document on this.
Let me back up. In regard to the level of awards, there is of course the tax aspect at the same time. I'll get to that at the end. What can we expect? The tax change takes money away from divorced parents, so it reduces the amount that's available for child support, whereas the guidelines generally will shift the spending on the support of the child from the current custodial over to the non-custodial. So you're taking money away from those couples, and at the same time you're shifting the burden between those couples. I think we can say that it's a little bit hard to tell what the net effect is from the published materials from the Department of Justice. I don't think they've been as complete as they could have been.
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I think what we can expect is that certainly non-custodial parents will be paying more than in the past and custodial parents will be receiving somewhat more than they have in the past.
In terms of problems, the first problem is that there is no general taking into account - and this starts on page 4, for those following in their booklets - of direct spending on the child on the part of the non-custodial parent.
So for visitation, let's say you have two situations. I'll give an example. In one situation the non-custodial parent has the child a third of the time. That parent will pay the same amount of child support as another parent who never sees his or her child. It's not fair on the part of the non-custodial parent. Equally, it's not fair on the part of the custodial parent. That is to say, you have one custodial parent who has his or her child all of the time who received no more child support than someone else whose child spends a third of the time with the other parent. The child support payments are the same in both cases. It's not fair for either side, and in the end it's not fair for the child.
There are equity problems on both the side of the non-custodial parent and of the custodial parent. This even goes to the extent where it could impinge on the non-custodial parent's ability to actually have visitation, and frankly in the end it just strikes most people as being unfair. When I talk to people and explain this, they ask how can that be, because even in most current divorce settlements it is taken into account.
The first problem is this issue of a non-custodial parent. The time spent with the child does not enter into the guideline unless the child spends 40% of the time...and, again, there is an extra condition, which I'll get to in the end.
So I would say fairness for all parties requires that to the degree the child spends a significant amount of time with them and there are significant expenses on the part of the non-custodial parent, those should be reflected in the awards.
The second point is that this guideline basically has a low-income surtax. What this means is that the Department of Justice, in examining their database for ``current awards'', found the guideline generated awards at the lowest income levels - they're actually lower than currently. So they said they couldn't accept this and they had to increase the awards at this level.
In regard to the documents you've been given from the Department of Justice for the latest round, the first round actually showed the marginal rates of contribution, but in the budget document these were not shown. What it means is that at certain low-income ranges non-custodial parents will be paying extremely high portions of their income in child support.
I have a table on page 6 of my document that shows - and admittedly these are the extreme cases - for example, someone with three children, from $9,000 to $10,000. This person is inching his or her way into the labour market. Of that $1,000, $768 of it is going to go to child support. When you get up to four or five children, it's $864. That is to say, the marginal contribution towards child support is 86.4% on the dollar earned at the margin. You have to make these calculations. They're not published. They're easily done and they're done for you here. They're in the document.
What are the problems with that? First of all, there are the equity considerations of two types. One, low-income individuals will be paying distinctly higher proportions of their income along these margins than people at higher income levels. That strikes most people as being unfair. Secondly, there is also the inequity between the custodial and non-custodial parent. The basic guideline is built on the principle of an equal sharing of these costs. What this adjustment does is boost up the share in an arbitrary fashion, I would say, of the non-custodial parent at that low-income level. So there's an equity problem in that respect too.
Regardless of how you feel about the equity problem, there are also what behavioural responses are likely to result. We know now, in paying attention to welfare reform and all sorts of program assistance, that once you have very high implicit tax rates of one form or another, the behavioural responses, as we say in economics, can sometimes be unintended and very undesirable.
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We're looking at low income levels. People are at the margin or in the welfare trap anyway, trying to get into the labour market. If they then face, with every dollar they earn, tax rates of this magnitude at the margin, it's an extreme disincentive to go into the labour market.
The irony of this is that in attempting to increase the award levels at these low income levels, the ultimate result is likely to be that those individuals won't work at all. They'll stay on welfare, or they'll be in the underground economy. They won't produce any taxable income - any income against which an award can be awarded. The result in the end will be less money going to custodial families and children.
So by attempting to do this - introducing inequities - I'd say in the end the result is going to be less money going towards people at this low end.
We appreciate that we need to help people at the low income levels. I agree that we have to help custodial parents as well. But by creating this burden on non-custodial parents, you're not going to solve any problems, I don't think.
There are also various other points I make about that. In the United States, for example, one of the explicit intentions of awards was actually to lower them at lower income levels, precisely where they're raising them here, because they've been seen to be inequitably high at those levels, historically speaking. Again we're talking about this low income adjustment. The response in other jurisdictions has been to look at the current awards and say they are too high, as they have been.
It's a good thing that a guideline is going to come in to introduce better equity across the income distribution so that lower-income parents are not paying disproportionately high shares. The response here has been that we have to twist that guideline around to bring it up to levels that some data.... I talk about the problems that the data indicate might have existed in the past.
I'd say a solution to that, for everyone's benefit, is to get rid of this low income adjustment and go back to just applying that fair base guideline across the board to all income levels, for the sake of equity and for the sake of the behavioural responses.
My third point is that these awards look nice on paper - how they're lined up. At every $1,000 or $2,000 level, you see the jump in the award, and you think that makes sense. As the income goes up, the award goes up. The problem is that these discreet jumps at $1,000 and $2,000 levels can result in some very bizarre results.
I have an example that I sketch out on page 6. What it means is that once you reach that threshold of going from $1 under to $1 over the limit, your child support awards can rise hugely.
For example, someone earning $12,000 per year pays $148 per month. Someone who earns $12,001 per year - an extra $1 - would see his or her child support - this is in the case of two children - payments increase from $148 to $202 per month, an extra $648 per year. So this individual earns $1 more per year and as a result has to pay $648 more per year in child support.
Again, there are the questions of equity. Someone who earns a little more has to pay out this proportionately greater amount. It's not fair - the equity - again on both sides, custodial and non-custodial. Those efficiency arguments, as we call them as economists, in terms of incentives to go out and earn a little bit more money will be.... There are disincentives of this type throughout the whole scale.
So why is it done like this? I don't know. The tax schedules are certainly not done like this. On the tax schedule, for every $10 or $20 of earnings, your taxes go up a little bit, precisely to avoid this sort of problem. This is a standard problem you learn in a first-year public economics course. You should not construct taxes of this type for exactly the reasons I'm telling you about: reasons of equity and reasons of efficiency. You should not construct any other sort of deduction in this way either, including the Canada Pension Plan. There's nothing out there like it.
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In the previous documents published by the government - perhaps this is why - between the income levels, they said that at $10,000 you pay this much, and then over the next $1,000, for each additional $1, you pay x%, which would in fact resolve this problem. It would smooth it out precisely in the way that income taxes, social assistance, etc., do.
Presenting it in this way avoids having to publish those marginal rates, and some of those marginal rates, as I've just expressed to you, are rather high. One can raise the question of whether this is why it has been constructed in this way.
I would say if the rates are high, they're high, but at least don't introduce extra inefficiencies and extra inequities by having these jumps at $1,000 and $2,000 levels. Also, avoid the type of situation in which an individual earns an extra $1 per year but pays an extra $648 in child support.
You're going to hear about this from your constituencies if you don't fix it now, I think, because they will be experiencing this. They'll see their incomes go up by $1, $10, or $100 per year, and they'll see their child support go up by $648 a year.
The fourth point is on the hardship condition. I'm turning to page 7 of my document. The hardship condition sort of sleeps through. It's there throughout the major part of these guidelines. It's taken into account in most cases whether there are to be adjustments or not. It's the rule about taking into account spending by the non-custodial parent on the child - the 40% rule. The child has to be there 40% of the time.
It also requires that there be a comparison of the standards of living of the two households, and it would only be done, even with the 40% rule, for example, if the non-custodial parent - the payer - had a lower standard of living.
That seems pretty reasonable to a lot of people off the top. After all, when a family is together it's sharing a standard of living. After the fact, why shouldn't there be a fair sharing of standard of living as well, especially when we see custodial parents typically having - my own research I think has documented this the best - a decline in standard of living and non-custodial parents typically having an increase? It's not fair.
In the face of that, how can I be against standard of living comparisons? First of all, what does a standard of living comparison mean? It means you look at all of the income going to one family and all of the income going to the other, you define and figure out how many people are in each family, you adjust that income for the needs based on the size of the family, and you take that into consideration.
The first point is that you're no longer talking about child support. You're now talking about spousal support, and you're talking about support for whoever else is in that family. While I'm an advocate that spousal support is often appropriate, this committee from the very beginning, in my understanding, and everywhere else child support guidelines have been introduced has carefully separated the issue of child support from that of spousal support. Once you go to standard of living conditions, you're putting the two right back together. From strictly that perspective, it doesn't seem appropriate.
Secondly, the award sometimes can be very large. Are those sorts of transfers practical in any sense?
I would say the most important thing, however, is that while this sort of standard of living comparison is very intuitively appealing the day after divorce, 15 years later - and child support awards can last 15 years, 20 years, or longer - after someone has remarried, had more children, had another remarriage, or had a second divorce.... First of all, from the conceptual level, what do these people's standards of living per se have to do with each other any more?
We should be talking about child support, especially since you're going to have to ask these couples 15 years later what their new families are, what their incomes are, and what's been going on. It's a very invasive and complicated sort of investigation. Everything that goes on with that new family could affect the child support.
The child support should be - I think most people agree - between the parents who had the child and only between the parents who had the child. To do otherwise is not appropriate, and to do otherwise gets you into a mess.
So I give you this scenario. By these standard of living rules that are introduced, 15 years later your ex-spouse remarries or divorces another time, has a second spouse after that, and has a new child. That could affect your child support, either on the side of the payer or on the side of the recipient. Can you imagine living through that? You're putting your life together and something that happens to this person who once upon a time you had a child with, these other things that have nothing to do with you and not much to do with your child will affect your child support, and could affect it significantly - again the equity and, secondly, allowing people to get on with their lives.
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Also, in particular, this will affect individuals. This will certainly affect remarriage. For example, the custodial parent who has a child - if he or she remarries that could well affect the child support that he or she receives. ``Oh, you've remarried. That's a deduction in your child support.'' Why? Because that introduces that new person, making that new person implicitly responsible for the child support of the previous marriage.
This whole issue of the hardship condition, I would say, allows for these departures or not from the guidelines. It shouldn't be an issue. Child support guidelines should be about child support. It should be about the non-custodial parent paying his or her fair share, based on that child and what he or she earns and can pay towards that child. That should be the consideration. The child support payment should not go up; it should not go down depending on these other considerations.
As I say, both conceptually but also in terms of practice, my God, when people realize that 10 or 15 years later they really wanted to be divorced.... In the Divorce Act of 1968, one of the main principles was the clean break. What kind of clean break is it if every time something happens to someone in the labour market...? Up to the whole length of the child support can have repercussions back to this type. That's not a very clean break. I think Canadians would prefer to have a cleaner break, all the time ensuring that the non-custodial parent pays his or her fair share of child support.
The one case, this fifth point, is the exceptional case of joint custody. I think most people are now in general agreement that joint custody can, when it works, be a good thing. When I said comparisons of standards of living do not directly enter into the child support awards in most cases, the one exception is joint custody. Joint custody is tightly defined as being equal sharing, let's say fifty-fifty.
Then in that case the document - it wasn't in the government's budget document, but it was in the background, the supporting documents. I don't know what you call these things, but that's where I found this part of it.
Where there is joint custody, the instructions are for the judge to minimize the difference in the standard of living of the two households. So the sorts of calculations I was just describing to you should presumably be carried out and those transfers would be made. What this means is that you have basically two different regimes for setting child support. One is for everyone up to 50% joint custody; the other is at joint custody.
So because there are basically different formulas for doing the different kinds of awards in these circumstance, this could result in situations where you could have one person who has his or her child 30% or 40% of the time and then another who has the same income and everything the same except he or she has his or her child 50% of the time. You could see that person who has the child more of the time at the same time paying massively more child support. So the reward for taking more of the responsibility for one's child could be a significant increase in the child support paid to the other household.
Again, there are questions of equity on both sides of the coin, questions of efficiency and also in terms of the response, and I say that represents a significant disincentive towards that sort of relationship and, again, entwines divorced individuals' lives in a way that isn't necessary.
Another point I'll make is that there are no guarantees on access or how the child support is spent. This is a tough issue, and of course we all know that child support, access, and these other issues should not be linked together. However, in reality they are. To the degree that link can be broken - terrific.
The other thing, though, is that these guidelines can do a nice job of getting at the child support issue per se. Why not round out the legislation to at least have some sort of statement of principles regarding access, and perhaps some sort of recourse put into effect, so that it is a full and complete child support package? That way non-custodial parents who feel that they are having problems with custody that then become related to child support could at least have a sense that yes, someone cares about them as well, and have some sort of recourse to procedures, similar perhaps to those on the custodial side if the parents fall behind on the payments.
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That's the structure of the guidelines.
About taxes, you probably have heard everything you need to know about the tax changes, and they are going to happen anyway. I don't think there's any controversy -
The Chair: Just for your information, the tax changes are not before us in this. They'll be part of a budget implementation bill, which will go to the finance committee.
Prof. Finnie: Okay. The only point here, of course, as I said at the beginning, is the tax change takes money away from divorced parents. But frankly, I come out in favour in the end. I think that's fair enough. Why should the tax system support divorced parents as opposed to parents and children of all families? While I'd say some of the arguments have been a bit contorted and a bit of marketing has been going on, I'm not so naive as to think.... Anyway, we'll let that be as it is.
Is the earned income supplement...? That's not part of it either? Okay. I think that's a great program. It has nothing to do with child support, but I think it's a great program.
The Chair: Tell us anyway.
Prof. Finnie: Working-income supplements are great programs. I believe in those things. But again, they have nothing to do with child support per se.
I have a parting comment. As I say, I'm a supporter of guidelines, and I saw the need for them. However, two things have changed. One thing is the world has changed somewhat, partly because of Madam Thibaudeau, partly because of these initiatives. I think now the courts are doing a better job of doing child support than they were. Award levels have come up. I'm not a legal scholar, but I have started reading the legal journals on this stuff, and in fact there are those who would argue many of the goals of child support guidelines are happening now through the courts. That is to say, they're generally higher, taking into account that children do cost more than we thought before. There are even informal or, to some degree, formal sorts of formulae that at least give a very good starting point for setting awards that reflect a fair payment on the part of the non-custodial parent and those are something that will improve the condition of children and custodial parents.
The danger of this guideline, I think, is to introduce mandatory - you have to follow them, basically.... Especially with the inequities, the unfairnesses, the rigidities, the problems they're writing into the structure of this, they're taking what could be a very excellent starting point, which could apply in many cases and which could improve the situation and meet all the goals I talked about at the beginning: removing the arbitrary differences, increasing the level of awards, making sure they're fair across income levels, reducing the costs of divorce and allowing people to plan for their futures. All of that could be done with the basic guideline, I would say, cleaned up in the simple manner I've talked about.
None of the problems I've introduced here would be at all difficult to clean up. Then in the end, perhaps, you could even make them advisory - perhaps strongly advisory, yet not to put people in a straitjacket but to give them very strong guidance about what a good award would be.
That's it. That's all I have to say. I will entertain questions.
[Translation]
I will be pleased to answer in French or in English. I feel comfortable enough to answer in French.
[English]
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Mr. Ramsay, ten minutes.
Mr. Ramsay (Crowfoot): Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Thank you for attending and giving us your view of this bill.
I don't know if this bill is going to solve so many problems, because first of all it deals primarily with support orders, support payments. It doesn't deal with access. You touched on access. I have heard from non-custodial parents who are very concerned about their living up to their side of the deal according to a court order and of course being denied access, in defiance of a court order.
I think any amendment we could offer is outside the bill. So any amendment dealing with access I think would not be in order, because the bill doesn't allow room for it.
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It's not what I see as an all-encompassing bill that deals with all the troubling aspects of child support, spousal support and access. It simply doesn't do that.
I suppose I could ask you this. The models you looked at in the United States - you say this is where these guidelines originated from. How is it working in those jurisdictions that have adopted guidelines? What about enforcement?
We heard yesterday from a witness who is present today that hundreds of thousands of dollars in back payments have never been paid because the law doesn't have the teeth to enforce it. Do you have any comments on that?
Prof. Finnie: My major comment would be that payment and enforcement is integrally related to the structure of the guidelines. One of the things the guidelines have to do is convince people that they're part of something that's fair.
So non-custodial parents out there say this is fair, and that is an important part. That's the first key element - that the people towards whom this is directed have a sense that they're being treated fairly. To the degree they're being treated unfairly they'll dig in, and the money will be hard to get no matter what enforcement measures you put in place.
Second is the actual structure of the guidelines. When I talk about implementation, one of the key things is that implementation means the award level is the appropriate level at all times and people know what it is and collection can be done in a fairly efficient manner.
My own guideline - I've gone further than the justice committee and I have a nice simple set of percentages. In my own guideline, which is roughly similar to this, I've recommended a simple set of percentages of non-custodial parents' incomes that I suggest should actually be deducted at source - the same as the Canada Pension Plan and income tax - and directed that way.
There are programs already in place that are doing that, but when I was developing my guideline I wanted a guideline that would work well in this respect. The committee's guideline, because it has all of these complicated adjustments along the way, I think would not work.
First, it would not be seen to be as fair as it could be, which will cut into the implementation, collection or enforcement. Second, the actual structure of the guideline will be such that putting in place the sort of collection programs that I'm talking about will be difficult.
Mr. Ramsay: It doesn't matter what we put in the legislation. If it doesn't seem fair, and fairness is always a subjective matter, you can't -
I don't know if I should really say this to you or not, but I'm going to say it anyway. It sounds a little bit like this stuff is coming from an ivory tower. If that's not fair you just throw it right back at me, but when you talk -
The Chair: Or I could do it for you.
Mr. Ramsay: Come on now, Madam Chair, be fair.
The Chair: I'm married to an ivory tower. I'm very defensive about these things.
Mr. Ramsay: Anyway, we're going to have to take the flak at ground level on all the legislation that comes out, including this, so enforcement is a key part of this.
Prof. Finnie: I agree.
Mr. Ramsay: We have non-custodial parents coming into our office and saying they're making their payment faithfully, and when they see their kids they know the money isn't being spent on those children. They're running around in rags while the spouse is going to movies or to Phantom of the Opera and that kind of thing. This is the kind of feedback and type of complaints we're receiving, so enforcement is a crucial aspect here.
Within the document there is this whole aspect of the removal of licences and passports and that kind of thing. What's your comment on that? We had a recommendation by the witness, still present today, who suggested that we have jail terms for those who fail to meet their obligation in terms of child support. What do you think about the coercive power of the state in bringing home to spouses the need to look after their children?
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Prof. Finnie: I'm going to dodge that one partly.
Mr. Ramsay: Why?
Prof. Finnie: Because, and this is going to sound like an ivory tower response, I'm not an expert on implementation issues of this type. However, I'm not going to dodge it in the sense that I think you're absolutely right; in every recommendation I talk about here, one of the key concerns is that the guideline is fair and is regarded as fair, so that the government can stand up and say this is a fair guideline and people ought to fall in line and make their payments because it is fair. I think some people will respond by saying it's fair, and their friends will tell them it is fair. It's a broad brush of fairness, but this is what this guideline is about.
The problem with the legislation now - and this I can say something about - is this. When I tell people there's no adjustment for the spending on the part of the non-custodial parent unless the child spends 40% of the time, their response is usually - and this is not ivory tower, I get people calling me out of the blue - how can that be, it's not right, it's not fair. When you're talking about constituents, make your guideline. Put in place a guideline that people will be able to say is fair.
I can't take into account every specific circumstance, but in the broad line it is fair. To tell someone that they have a three-bedroom apartment instead of a two-bedroom apartment, and they're feeding and looking after their child one-third of the time but that won't enter into their child support payment - that will strike most people as being fundamentally unfair.
Mr. Ramsay: Do you support the enforcement measures in this bill?
Prof. Finnie: I have no opinion on those. I think enforcement measures are.... I have no opinion. My expertise is on the structure of the guideline. I'm not an expert. I don't know if those things would work or not. I can't tell you.
I can't tell you if withdrawing maritime licences will have anything to do with enforcement, but I can tell you that having a fairer guideline will have a lot to do with enforcement.
That's what I'm willing to say. I'm not willing to say something about this other, because I don't know. Get another witness who knows something about that.
Mr. Ramsay: In the models that you're aware of, you're not aware of the enforcement requirement.
Prof. Finnie: Regrettably, on those levels of detail of enforcement I don't know.
Mr. Ramsay: You know that the king who makes laws that he can't enforce is no king at all.
Prof. Finnie: I agree.
Mr. Ramsay: Then why aren't you concerned about enforcement?
Prof. Finnie: I've stated that I'm very concerned about enforcement. All of my remarks here have been partially related to the issue of enforcement. There are many universities across this country, so I'm sure you can get someone who is an expert on this. My expertise is about guidelines, about the income changes that occur at divorce, and I'm glad to say a fair guideline will have a lot to do with collection and enforcement. That's what I'm here to talk about.
Mr. Ramsay: Thank you.
Madam Chair, I have a bit of time left, but not much.
It sounds to me as though you have brought forward a plan here. Your submission to this committee is as incomplete as Bill C-41, in my humble opinion, because you're suggesting that if rules can be made fair enough, everyone will abide by them. They won't. So your submission, from my side of the table - where I'm looking for help, I'm not getting any. So I guess I'll have to wait for another witness who can tell me about enforcement in other jurisdictions where the coercive power of the state to take away licences and passports and put people in jail, whether it works or not -
Prof. Finnie: I've given you a better solution. I'm saying you should have a simpler guideline. Go back to the base guideline and make payments deductible at source.
Mr. Ramsay: I agree with that.
Prof. Finnie: That'll get 80% to 90% of your payments paid every month and transferred over to the individual like that. So I can tell you about 80% to 90% of them. Of the others, I don't know.
Mr. Ramsay: Do you have a model you can refer the committee to, where 80% to 90% of the payment orders are fulfilled?
Prof. Finnie: No, but I know the research is that 80% to 90% of those individuals making child support payments earn the sort of regular salary or earnings where they have other deductions happening through the tax system, so to add one more of those on - they would have no choice. As individuals have their CPP and income tax deducted, they will also have their child support deducted. So I can get you 80% like that. But that's obvious. But that only works if you have a guideline that's simple and fair.
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Mr. Ramsay: I want another five minutes at the end.
The Chair: Thanks, Mr. Ramsay. It seems that Mr. Finnie can take care of himself. He won't need my help.
Prof. Finnie: Thank you.
The Chair: Mr. Kirkby.
Mr. Kirkby: I have two questions. You indicate that at low income levels it appears the awards are boosted up and require parents at low income levels to pay more money to look after the children. Would it not be the case that at low income levels these people would be spending a greater percentage or proportion of their income on their children in any event, with not so much money available for other things?
Prof. Finnie: That's a good point.
One of the ironic aspects of this part of the guideline is that a disproportionate number of the non-custodial parents at the low income level are women. So this provision in the legislation actually has the ironic aspect that it will be hitting low-income women as payers more than low-income men. I just wanted to make that point.
Second, based on the best evidence out there, we don't really know how the pattern of spending on children rises with income levels across the board. We don't know what it is at the low end or the top end. The best guess, I would say, is that it's a relatively constant proportion.
We're talking about people who are in the range of social assistance anyway, so we're talking about the extra proportion at the margin - an extra $1,000. For someone who is living with his or her family, would $885 of that extra $1,000 be going towards the children? We don't know the answer to that.
On the other hand, we're also understanding that we want to move towards a system in which individuals have the incentives and the means to pull themselves back into the labour market, and this is not going to help that.
Mr. Kirkby: What about the situation, say, in which the non-custodial parent has the child or children 30% of the time? You indicate that this is unfair, because they're going to be incurring significant expense while they do have the children. But is it not the case that the custodial parent is going to be the one who, as the children are growing, will always be buying their new clothes, their winter clothes, their spring clothes, their school supplies, and so on? Even if a significant amount of time is spent with the non-custodial parent, is the custodial parent not still responsible to provide all of those things the children need?
Prof. Finnie: My response is that the guidelines are based, from the foundation, on the notion that the child spends all of his or her time with the custodial parent. The guidelines are then based on what is a fair sharing of the costs in that situation.
You might say to me that you're still not sure the non-custodial parent's share is going to be his or her fair share. I'd say if you're really not convinced of that, make the award levels higher across the board. But they're still based on that situation in which, on the baseline, the custodial parent pays for everything because he or she has the child all of the time.
If you want to raise the levels, raise the levels, but do it in an honest way. This is, again, punishing those -
I guess what you're asking me is whether, in that 30% of the time, there is really a significant reduction in costs for that custodial parent. I think the answer to that is, first of all, yes. Secondly, the total costs of the child have risen, but it's the non-custodial parent who's absorbing that whole cost. With no adjustment -
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Let me give you an example. Let's say it costs $10,000 per year when the child is with that non-custodial parent all the time. Let's say they have income levels such that they're splitting it $5,000 and $5,000. Now let's say going and spending a third of the time with that non-custodial parent adds an extra $3,000 to the cost of the child. I'm doing this off the top of my head, but I think it will work. Total costs are $13,000.
What are the shares now? If we make no adjustment, that custodial is still paying $5,000 and that non-custodial parent is now paying $8,000. The non-custodial parent is now paying a significantly higher proportion, 60% more than the other parent.
Mr. Kirkby: How would you construct guidelines to take that into account?
Prof. Finnie: Thank you for asking that. I sketched that out in my book on child support guideline options.
You want to be careful you don't get back into the case-by-case bargaining that happens with court-based cases. The way to set it up, I would say, is to have more benchmarks. As we have a benchmark - the basic document is a benchmark where the child spends all of his or her time with the custodial parent - you set up a couple of more benchmarks.
Suppose the child spends 25%, 30%. 15%. By my guideline, which is the simpler guideline, you simply adjust the percentages paid accordingly. With my guideline, for example, in the case of two children I say 30% of gross income goes towards the child. You would have a benchmark that would say when the child spends 25% of the time with the non-custodial parent, let's knock it down to 24% or something like that instead of 30%. You could establish other benchmarks along the way. We might dicker over what those appropriate benchmarks would be, but a bit of research and consideration could arrive at some pretty good ones that would be better than what is currently proposed, which is a benchmark of absolutely no adjustment.
I think the reason this hurts people the most is that it's those people who, even though their marriage has ended in failure, even though they want the child to live or are willing to accept that the child lives predominantly with the other parent, want to do their share of raising that child. There's a lack of recognition in a financial way, but I also hear people saying, doesn't my input count? A message is being sent too.
The adjustment wouldn't be dollar for dollar, that's for sure, but there should be some reasonable adjustment I think people, for example on a committee like this, could come to. It would be a fair thing and it would be sending the right signal: yes, your input counts too.
That's reflected in the guideline. As I say, it operates on both sides, not just for the non-custodial parent but for the custodial parent as well.
I can get you a copy of my book, if you like. It's quite thin and it's quite readable.
The Chair: Make him pay for it.
Mr. Kirkby: How much is it?
Prof. Finnie: You can get it at Renouf down on Sparks Street. It's only $16, I think. I don't make a penny on it.
Mr. Kirkby: If I read only 40% of it, how much do I pay?
Prof. Finnie: If you really want a copy, I can get you a copy.
Mr. Kirkby: No, no.
Prof. Finnie: I have one over at my ivory tower at Carleton.
Mr. Kirkby: I can read it in my barnyard.
The Chair: Mr. Bellehumeur.
[Translation]
M. Bellehumeur (Berthier - Montcalm): I am reading your brief and I find it quite detailed. I think it is the most detailed brief we have received on the subject. It contains examples, tables, etc.
Please excuse my late arrival. I could not come earlier. However, your brief seems detailed enough to give us a good idea of your position and to allow us to take it into consideration.
[English]
The Chair: Mr. Ramsay.
Mr. Ramsay: First of all, if you are from an ivory tower, you're unique, because usually the ones I run into from an ivory tower claim to know everything about everything, but you simply tell us what you know, and what you don't know you say you don't know. I appreciate that very much.
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Do you know the delinquency rate in Canada or in any of the jurisdictions you're familiar with within Canada? This is delinquency rate in terms of non-custodial parents maintaining their payments for child support.
Prof. Finnie: No, in fact, we have terrible data on that. We don't know.
Here's what you really want to know. First of all, there's the definition. Is it relative to a court-ordered award? Is it relative to what people have agreed to otherwise? There's a definition of that sort of thing. But second, there's no coherent register of what awards should be paid and what are not being paid.
The closest, I think, is now in some of the provincial programs where you do have the enforcement measures. They're starting to get a handle on those, but there are still so many cases and there's such a burden that they haven't been able to really put order to the data.
I don't know how many times over the last three or four years I've been asked this question: how many are delinquent, and why are they delinquent? As a researcher, I urge this committee to commit resources to finding those questions out, because that could then help us make better legislation down the road.
I would be delighted to be part of any such process. I do applied-type research, but this question gnaws away. How many people don't pay and why don't they pay? We don't know that, and we should.
Mr. Ramsay: Of course, that gets us into this area that you don't want to talk about, which is enforcement. That's a unique part of this bill. It's something that is new and different.
Non-custodial parents who have not paid their child support can lose their licences and their passport, or their right to obtain a passport. That's new about the bill. The enforcement measures are clear.
I believe in those kinds of deterrents. I don't believe in just making it fair. It's fair to whom? To you? Well, fine. What about the...? Fairness, I guess like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. What might appear fair to you or to the justice minister or to this committee might not be fair to the thousands of people who are going to be encompassed by this bill.
I have some real concerns, but I won't belabour you with them, because you don't want to talk about it. I recognize and appreciate that. That's all I have to say.
The Chair: Thanks, Mr. Ramsay.
Mr. Loney, you had a question, and I think Mr. Maloney does too.
Mr. Loney (Edmonton North): Yes, I have one question.
Mr. Finnie, should there be an accounting of the funds from the support payment awarded that are spent on the child by the custodial parent?
Prof. Finnie: That's a good question. I'd say no and yes, in fact. I'll explain, and I can explain easily.
Consider one of the reasons we need guidelines. The difficulty of arriving at an award is that it's difficult to know what money is being spent on a child. That's partly because there's simply the accounting measure. Money comes in and money comes out. But there are also the indivisibles of functioning in a household. How do you separate out the costs of the child and the costs of the parent for the house or the mortgage? Can we really just say that there are four people in the family, so divide it by four? Of course not. Consider food.
Even on a conceptual level, this is something the best experts in Canada - take Statistics Canada, for example - struggle with consistently. In the end, we come down with very rough measures to do that on an aggregate level. On an individual level, it is basically impossible. Again, this is one of the things that gets us toward guidelines.
That said, in one of the concluding sections in my paper I raise the point, which was raised elsewhere, that one of the incentives to address the enforcement problem is not just that the guideline is fair, but that the money is in fact being well spent.
If I were the minister, I would first of all explain that this is a problem. We can't ask people to give a detailed accounting for the reasons I just gave and explained. Most people then understand that.
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Second, I'd also put in some sort of mechanism. First would be an appeal to principles. This would be some sort of appeal mechanism so that in the extreme cases, or in those cases in which truly the money was not being spent, there would be some vehicle for the non-custodial parent who was being responsible and making the payments for the sake of the child, to make sure that money was going toward the child. It's part of a broader child support package. Yes, I would do that.
I would not do it in a way that says, oh, you've been spending money on this, that and the other thing as the custodial parent, so you should be spending more money on your child. That's not fair, because we can't impose our own wishes and values on our ex-partner. On the other hand, we do want to preserve the integrity of the whole process by making sure that a sufficient amount of money is being spent in a responsible way.
As for that no and yes, do you understand what I mean?
Mr. Loney: Yes. I raised the question because I know it is a major concern of the non-custodial parent, who is making the support payment. In cases that I've dealt with so far, it's a major concern for the welfare of the child. It's so that the proper proportion of the support payment is being actually spent on the child itself other than the bare necessities of a roof over their heads and food on the table.
Prof. Finnie: Yes. I recognize it's a very important issue. It's a tough one. I think something could be done that would be better than nothing. Currently, there's nothing.
The Chair: Thank you. Mr. Maloney, you had a question?
Mr. Maloney (Erie): Last night I believe we heard a presentation suggesting that 95% of the individuals who are in default of support payments simply just can't pay. Are you aware of any studies that would confirm or deny that? If there were any, are you in a position in which you would know?
Prof. Finnie: I think I would know if there was hard, consistent data of that type.
Mr. Maloney: All right.
Prof. Finnie: I can certainly say that I'm not aware of that data.
Mr. Maloney: You suggested that perhaps there could be an adjustment of 20%, 30% or 40% of the proportion of time the non-custodial parent has that child.
Prof. Finnie: Yes.
Mr. Maloney: Is there a practical way of calculating that time? Would there not be fluctuations from month to month, season to season -
Prof. Finnie: Yes.
Mr. Maloney: - and year to year? If we adopted that measure, how would we actually implement it? Is there a practical way of doing it, or would it be just too complex to even consider?
Prof. Finnie: I think it's interesting that you're considering the complexity of adjusting simply the amount of time the child is spending with that non-custodial parent. Some of the other complexities I was talking about, for example, the extended family structure - perhaps this was before you came in - have just been introduced into the guideline. I appreciate your concern for this notion of it being implementable.
As I mentioned earlier, I would set it up again in terms of benchmarks. I think one could do so. Remember, the current guideline is based on an assumption that the child spends all of the time with the custodial parent. I was part of the procedure that arrived at these calculations. They then estimate the spending on the child by one parent and then the other, and what child support payment would be appropriate to make sure that the non-custodial parent pays his or her share in this baseline situation.
You could go through a similar exercise. Suppose a child was with the other parent 25% of the time. What would that give you as an adjustment? In terms of it fluctuating, of course it would.
In many of these situations, as in the current divorce situation, as you'd be establishing visitation and all of these other things, you would want to take into account the case-by-case basis and the credibility of the individual. You would want to make sure there was enforcement.
For example, I think the worst-case scenario here is someone who says they want to have the child one-third of the time. They get the support award adjusted down appropriately, but then they do not fulfil their responsibility.
My response is: don't punish the parent who really will have that child one-third of the time. Allow for that adjustment, then make sure there are mechanisms in place for those who do not live up to that responsibility they have stated. You come back on them and adjust the award down appropriately. There could be processes for review.
In a lot of these debates, they say that parents will say they won't do that, so therefore you can't make the adjustments. But then it's like the school child, where you say everyone is being tarred with the same brush.
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I say that there are a lot of responsible non-custodial parents out there. Fairness and efficiency require that you allow for that, and yet for those who do not live up to the responsibility, you then come down on them.
Mr. Maloney: Also look at the percentage of time that child is with the non-custodial parent, and take into consideration that the custodial parent perhaps has a larger home to take care of, buys the clothing, the food, and all the extra incidentals such as hydro, gas, etc.
Prof. Finnie: Yes, but let's be careful. A lot of those costs are actually fixed on both sides.
Let's say you have a situation where you have the child a third of the time and it's a simple situation with two parents and one child. Both parents decide that they can have adequate custody and adequate visitation. The non-custodial parent takes a two-bedroom apartment rather than a one-bedroom apartment. He or she is paying for that one-bedroom apartment 12 months a year, 100% of the time, whether the child is there or not. So some of these fixed costs actually work on both sides of the coin.
On the other hand, you're absolutely right, and I would say that some of these costs will continue to be borne almost exclusively by the custodial parent, and of course any adjustments should take that into account as well. That's why I said, for example, that for a non-custodial parent who has the child a third of the time, the adjustment would almost certainly not be to knock the child support down by a third - not at all, but a little research could come up with some reasonable benchmarks.
Mr. Maloney: Thank you, Madam Chair.
The Chair: Thank you, very much. I want to thank you, Professor Finnie.
I'm sorry, Mr. Telegdi, did you want to ask a question? You put your name on the list while you were chairing.
Mr. Telegdi: Yes. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Actually, I found some of your suggestions useful and one of the issues that was raised byMr. Ramsay, the uncertainty of the effect of various degrees of punishment, which I'm very pleased to hear today at this session. Perhaps Mr. Ramsay is looking at the same kind of stuff with the young offenders.
You seem to be so much more certain. What has struck me with the justice system is that oftentimes we apply levels of sanctions that might be inappropriate. Let me say what I mean.
I worked for many years with young offenders. Many times you have young offenders who will receive the kind of custody that further exposes them to the bad influences that got them into trouble in the first place, and they come out the worse for wear from prison.
It seems to me, on the other hand, that we heard from a witness yesterday who talked about a husband who abandoned his family. Obviously he has a very good income and because of various reasons managed to evade responsibility to the tune of $400,000. It would seem to me, and this is my viewpoint for Mr. Ramsay, that if that person had to go to jail, given his status he would very quickly find a way of paying up.
We know that with white-collar kinds of activity, jail is a very effective sanction, whereas there are situations with young people who are for whatever reasons quite damaged, where jail is the worst alternative that you can give them at that particular time, particularly if it's a sentence with a vengeance.
I know you are not an expert on this and you suggested to the committee that you might recommend some people to us from the university who are. I would like to hear your response on that.
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Prof. Finnie: First of all, my understanding of the justice system is that it's going to be hard to get someone who has that kind of money in jail. That is to say, he will go out and hire a very good lawyer who will do everything he can to get that person out of jail.
In terms of these other measures, again I don't know. What I come back to saying is that here's something you can do as a committee. If you make the basic guideline, as far as possible, you will have fewer of these cases to chase after. Every time you stick someone in jail or hit them with another stick, that costs money. Why not just have something that people will cooperate with to start with, at the margin?
Let's say the delinquency rate is 50%. If we can get it down to 35% with a fair guideline, that's a good start. Then let's say you bring it into automatic deduction at source, you can get another 10% or 15%.
So instead of throwing half those non-custodial parents in jail, however many they are, which costs I don't know how much money per year, you can at least in this committee have a good guideline that can be a costless step that will increase the cooperation.
In terms of those others, and in terms of the moral aspect of them, I'm not a moral scholar.I could give you my opinion, but frankly it would be a lay opinion in terms of the morals of doing that.
It occurs to me that they would be unequal applications. Those who wish to apply for a passport would have that denied. What about the neighbour who is not interested in having a passport? So you have a sort of unequal application of the censurers of this. To me, that's something that's come across. But again, this is my reaction as a layperson.
As someone who knows something about guidelines, that I can say. Again, I think you can get good mileage, it's costless, it's not going to cost anyone anything. I think you can get good mileage out of having a good guideline, and I would say take the extra step and put in a deduction at source.
Mr. Telegdi: There's no question that fair guidelines and a perception of that are important.I don't think anybody's arguing with that.
Just for your information to take away with you, one of the things I was quite impressed with the other day was when I heard on the news that noted criminal lawyer F. Lee Bailey had millions of dollars that the government was trying to get from him. He was not giving up that money until they put him in jail, and then he signed it over very quickly. Now that he's out of jail, he's going to sue the government to get that money back, which I think dramatically illustrates the point of how even the people with the best legal representation and money will react to that kind of situation.
I'll leave that with you, and Mr. Ramsay will make note of that.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Telegdi.
Professor, you have given us a very entertaining and helpful afternoon. Thank you very much. It was certainly lively and I was awfully sorry that you were able to fend for yourself and I wasn't able to jump in the breach there.
Thank you. We're adjourned until 7 p.m.