Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I listened with interest as my colleagues raised the issue of the Child Tax Benefit and how that is clawed back. Mr. Miltenberger will remember in a previous government we had a Minister of ECE that we dubbed “The Claw.” I’m sure that Mr. Lafferty would not like to receive such notoriety.
I had an incident recently in my constituency which causes me to wonder about how far we go to claw back things. This constituent had an unfortunate tragedy in her family. Community members came together and raised money and made donations to help this family cope with this. Now, I understand that when she went to income support the next month, that they treated those donations as income and actually clawed that back from her in the form of not giving her the income support.
I’d like to ask the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, is it the policy of our government to treat donations to a family that’s had a tragedy, which is a common, common practice in the North here, is it our practice to treat that as income.