“I think men are equally involved with their children and should be presumed in law to be equally involved as their partners. When you sign on the dotted line for your marriage licence, does anyone tell the man, ‘you know what, you're not an equal partner?'”The form is offensive and goes against the Charter of Rights, said Mr. Guspie. “I would encourage any man that finds himself in that situation to simply phone up his local tax office and say ‘how would you like to face me in federal court next week?'”
Editor's note: At least I got the definitive word in this article...there may be hope for society yet. Notably NDP MP Olivia Chow seems to agrees with me...
For child-care benefit, mom's the word
GLORIA GALLOWAY
Globe and Mail Update
Ottawa — Dads who try to complete the forms required to claim the federal government's new child care benefit may be surprised to learn they need a note from their wives.
To qualify for the $100-a-month Universal Child Care Benefit payments, parents are asked to fill in the application for the Canada Child Tax Benefit. But the government stipulates that mothers, not fathers, must do the applying.
The third paragraph of the form states: “When both a male and a female parent live in the same home as the child, we presume that the female parent is primarily responsible and should apply, unless a note from the female parent is attached to this application that states that the male parent is primarily responsible for the child.”
The form is not new. It is the same document that parents fill in to apply for the Canada Child Tax Benefit and has been in use for several years. But, because the new child-care benefit is universal, more moms and dads are seeing it.
And some are concerned about the message it imparts.
“We're living in the 21st Century. There is no reason for this whatsoever,” said Danny Guspie, the executive director of Fathers' Resources International, a Toronto-based group that lobbies for fathers' rights.
“I think men are equally involved with their children and should be presumed in law to be equally involved as their partners. When you sign on the dotted line for your marriage licence, does anyone tell the man, ‘you know what, you're not an equal partner?'”
The form is offensive and goes against the Charter of Rights, said Mr. Guspie. “I would encourage any man that finds himself in that situation to simply phone up his local tax office and say ‘how would you like to face me in federal court next week?'”
Jacqueline Couture, a spokeswoman for Revenue Canada, said the forms comply with the Income Tax Act, which is an old law. The presumption that women are the primary caregivers goes back to 1945 and the introduction of the Family Allowance, which many Canadians remember as the baby bonus, she said.
But Olivia Chow, the Human Resources critic for the NDP, said new forms mean fathers are being denied their responsibility to their child.
“I couldn't believe this actually,” said Ms. Chow. “This is what, the ‘50s, or even before that?”
The requirement that mothers must write a note giving their husbands permission to fill out the form is almost humorous, said Ms. Chow.
“And the assumption that the female would always be the primary caregiver - I thought that a child is a shared responsibility, keeping a household is a shared responsibility,” she said.
“With a form like that, no wonder we still find that females still do most of the household work and have tremendous stress because they never have any time if we expect her, even if she's working, to be the primary care giver.”