Editor's note: This article originally appeared on The Trillium, a Village Media website devoted exclusively to covering provincial politics at Queen’s Park.
Ontario Liberals are proposing a tax credit they say will help keep kids playing.
"There's a generation of kids that really lost out during the COVID pandemic and were kept in lockdown and didn't have the ability to participate in sports or drama or art classes, so it's a real shame," Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie said at Queen's Park on Wednesday morning.
Orleans MPP Stephen Blais was set to table a bill Wednesday that, if passed, would establish a $1,000 non-refundable tax credit for kids' sports and extracurricular activities.
"Play. It's simple. We all remember the joys of play growing up," Blais told reporters, highlighting the benefits of physical activity on mental and academic health.
The Prioritizing Leisure Activities for Youth Act (the P.L.A.Y. Act) would provide "pocketbook relief" to families at a time when many are struggling with rising costs, Crombie and Blais said.
"Families of all shapes and sizes, of all income levels are looking for ways to save. For some this means cutting out the little extras, for too many that means cutting out essentials," said Blais, adding that many kids can't afford to participate in organized sports and other activities.
He said one-quarter of middle-class kids aren't involved in any extracurricular sports.
"That number gets worse as the income levels go down," he said, adding that it's also challenging for families to afford sports, for example, as they become more competitive, with the cost of equipment and registration fees going up.
"We must do everything we can to ensure that our kids can benefit from the mental and physical benefits that play through sport and extracurricular activities provides," Blais said.
He added that volunteerism has also declined, saying he hopes the government will implement measures to encourage adults "to offer a little bit of time to coach, to referee, to be a trainer so that our kids can continue to have access to those activities."
Blais said the types of activities covered by the tax credit would be left to regulation, but his hope is that it would include a "wide array" of extracurriculars and summer camps.
The Progressive Conservatives hold a majority in the house, so it would be rare for a private member's bill from an opposition MPP to pass. Blais called his bill a "common sense measure," with Crombie saying she hopes the PCs will adopt all the measures the Liberals are raising.
Blais' bill comes a day after Liberal MPP Adil Shamji tabled the BUILD Ontario Act, which would allow for four-unit, four storey buildings on urban residential land across the province.
While Green Leader Mike Schreiner said he'd support Blais bill on the extracurriculars tax credit, NDP Leader Marit Stiles didn't immediately offer her support when asked.
"We have supported tax credits for extracurricular activities in the past, I see no reason not to do that moving forward," said Schreiner. "We know we have an affordability crisis and we also want to encourage young people to engage in sports and the arts."
"We'll look at it for sure," Stiles said, though she added that it sounds similar to a federal tax incentive former prime minister Stephen Harper introduced.
The former federal Conservative government's children's fitness tax credit allowed families to claim up to $500 in eligible expenses and get back up to $75. This was later doubled and became refundable, before it was scrapped by Justin Trudeau's Liberals and replaced along with other measures by the Canada Child Benefit.
"There were some reports written on that that showed that it really didn't have the outcomes I think that were intended, so we want to look very carefully at what Mr. Blais is proposing," she said.
A federal tax expenditures report from 2017 found that the fitness tax credit and another arts tax credit had "significant shortcomings in terms of their effectiveness, fairness and efficiency." The report added that the "effective price effects that resulted from the (credits) were relatively small and unlikely to generate significant behavioural responses, including because family decisions as to the participation of children in physical and artistic activities are relatively price-insensitive."
Blais' bill would allow families to deduct up to $1,000 from the tax they would otherwise be required to pay.
Stiles said she thought more investments in schools would have a bigger impact on kids.
"We are seeing school boards across the province, having to make massive cuts to extracurricular activities, sports, outdoor education, just to keep things running," she said. "I really want to see us making sure that all children have access to those programs, in school, in community centres, where most children are going to be able to access them."
Government House Leader Paul Calandra's office didn't respond to a question about whether the PCs would support the bill before publication.
