Included in the package of forms the midwife left us, between the vital statistics registration ("Registration of Live or Still Birth" -- how cheerful!) and a birth announcement form for the local homebirth wacko magazine, was a funny packet labeled "Canada Child Tax Benefit".
Apparently if you have a child, the government sends you a "baby bonus" of about $100 per month. They'll even direct deposit it into your bank account.
I was like, Mr. Jaw, meet Mr. Floor. Whoah, Socialism.
As far as I can tell, this is not a means-tested benefit. (There are additional supplemental benefits, beyond the basic one, that you can get if your income is sufficiently low.) All that is required is for the child and (at least) one of the parents to be Canadian citizens or permanent residents, and for the family to reside in Canada.
By my estimate, there are about 7 million people in Canada under age 18. (I'm not paying $3 to StatsCan for a detailed breakdown, so I added all 0-14's to 3/5 of the 15-19's -- a three-fifths compromise (!).) So the whole program is in the small-number billions of dollars -- say 5 billion dollars to maybe 15 billion depending on how many people qualify for the supplemental benefit.
I can't find out how much money Canada spends on social programs from the incredibly bad budget site but I estimated it at about 140 billion (based on this site which notes that an 11.5% increase in "program spending" is 14.3 billion). So maybe 5-10 percent of all social spending is this ridiculous benefit.
I don't understand the reasoning behind this at all. If the government wants to give $100/child/month to people who pay no taxes, well, do that and call it welfare -- don't pretend it's some sort of a "tax benefit". Conversely, if this is supposed to be a benefit for people who pay taxes, why can't they just give me a deduction on my friggin' taxes? Why do I have to register for this ridiculous direct-deposit scheme?
Of course I registered for it. But it felt dirty.
In The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding there are two index entries under "Alcohol":
Alcohol, effects on nursing mother
Alcohol, avoid using on nipples
Duly noted! I wonder if there are similar entries for "Gasoline: avoid using on nipples" and "Sulfuric acid: avoid using on nipples".
We are having houseguests: old friends from college. (If this explains to you why we are researching alcohol and breastfeeding, then you have a nasty suspicious mind. And you are correct.)
Sadly, the last batch of beer I brewed spoiled. The top blew off under high pressure early in the fermentation, and I'm not sure if I realized that for a day or so. In any case, some bacteria got in and colonized the batch. I deep-sixed it a couple of weeks ago. So we will be drinking off-the-shelf beer instead of homebrew.
And that is all on a personal level for now.