According to one Liberal MP, the federal government should pay stay- at-home parents $50 per week for taking care of their kids. Sounds like the 1998 version of the baby bonus.

Mississauga South Liberal MP Paul Szabo, chairman of an ad-hoc caucus committee, claims a payment of $50 per week would put stay-at-home parents on even footing with working parents who get to claim child-care expenses on their tax returns.

"The bold reality is that our Income Tax Act does discriminate against families who chose to provide direct parental care," Szabo said. And on this fact, Szabo is on the money. Indeed, working parents can write off up to $7,000 a year for child-care expenses. But his 50-bucks-a-week solution leaves a lot to be desired. Szabo's heart is in the right place; too bad the sweltering southern Ontario heat has clouded his judgment.

We give his idea a B grade. "B" for bureaucratically friendly, "b" for bickering friendly, and "b" for downright bumbling and boring.

Leave it to a Liberal backbencher to promote an idea that would involve cutting millions of benefit cheques each week or month. Let's see a new program requires many bureaucrats, offices in many provinces and a well-staffed 1-800 line and web site for Canadians who would be eager to get yet another entitlement payment.

Szabo and his caucus colleagues still don't understand that government can't solve every problem. And if government can play a role, it doesn't have to be an activist one. Such "frugal" thinking has never been afforded its rightful place in Liberal policy circles.

Szabo and friends probably envision a department of the "New and Improved" Baby Bonus cutting cheques to beleaguered families. Ah, the bureaucrats must be licking their chops to see the prospect of tinkering, meddlesome and activist government back on the horizon.

But a new bureaucracy is just the thin edge of a very dangerous wedge. By trying to repair a discriminatory tax regime with an even more discriminatory policy, you pit one group of taxpayers against another.

The Toronto Star fired the first shot in this bickering war with an editorial that asked, "Why should working Canadians pay taxes to support stay-at-home parents " Other columnists have called Szabo's idea an attack on working women. Almost 6,000,000 Canadian women are active in the labour force and over 68% of women with children under seven earn a weekly paycheque.

Yet we shouldn't be surprised that this policy suggestion is divisive. The Liberals have divided their opposition in the House of Commons and effectively played one party off against another. Why not do the same with Canadian taxpayers

Finally, Szabo's idea is bumbling and boring. What he and his caucus colleagues fail to understand is that the Income Tax Act is not the problem, it is the oppressive taxation regime that Canadians languish under which needs to be addressed.

Canadians don't need new tax benefits or entitlement cheques to make life easier, they need this government to get off of its butt and provide meaningful tax relief to Canadians. The 1998 budget measures in this regard were a sham with any positive effects of Paul Martin's so-called tax relief clawed back at $20,000 of income or eroded through 'bracket creep' and CPP premium increases.

Szabo and company should can their new baby bonus idea and give us real tax relief instead. With anticipated budget surpluses on the horizon, Canadians deserve no less!