Status of Women committee  Yes, absolutely. I used to receive funding to do exactly this work from Status of Women Canada. It's no longer available. I can't apply to IDRC, because Canada is not a developing country. The women in Canada are underdeveloped, but we can't apply for that funding there either.

Status of Women committee  This is a cynical view, but it is, as Nancy said a little while ago, a matter of political will. When you have a Department of Finance official who's allowed to sit there and say “We don't have to account for the pension income splitting because that's a benefit that goes to fami

Status of Women committee  The question is a really good one, and it goes to the heart of what is wrong with all of the hundred or so provisions that relate to family relationships in the Income Tax Act and other taxing provisions. It's absolutely right that at the beginning of World War II, this was rem

Status of Women committee  I want to very quickly touch on the question of a gender-based analysis of the post-secondary education funding. When you remember that women with university degrees are now earning less than 70% on average of what men are earning and then look at the fact that young women are gr

Status of Women committee  The answers are actually quite short. Corporate surpluses are now at the level of something like $300 billion. They've got to invest that money, so they send it overseas. It can go tax-free in a growing number of tax haven countries. Canada has not yet closed the door on that.

Status of Women committee  It's a standard, in corporations—but they mine it better. What happens is that as the years go by and the tax-free savings accounts get more and more money in them, given the distribution of income in this country.... First of all, it does nothing for low-income people; second,

Status of Women committee  This is one of the “stealth” items in the budget. The tax-free savings account actually extends the principle of income splitting to investment income for all people, not just people of a certain age receiving pension incomes. If you read the fine print in the ways and means moti

Status of Women committee  Well, that's the historic role of women in tax planning. There's the gold digger and then there's the tax shelter woman.

Status of Women committee  Yes. The way the personal income taxes work is that everybody who files a tax return and has taxable income pays exactly the same rate now on their first $37,800 in income. That rate is 15%. If somebody has $1 million in taxable income, they will pay 15% on their first $37,800; t

Status of Women committee  Everybody in the country is getting the benefit of that 1% tax cut, and it's the people whose incomes are stuck in the bottom or the middle of that first slice who are the ones who desperately need more income. Nobody else really needs it.

Status of Women committee  Let me just add, to take that point one tiny bit further, that I went through the most recent tax return statistics reported and did a calculation as to who would get what. I concluded that 22% of all tax filers will get no benefit at all from the 1% tax cut; those are the poores

Status of Women committee  Thank you. I'd also like to correct the record. I am not a doctor. I'm a professor in the Faculty of Law at Queen's University, cross-appointed to women's studies. Madam Chairperson, honourable members, I am very pleased to have this opportunity to talk to you today about this

Status of Women committee  With respect, Dr. Yalnizyan and I had agreed that she would speak first, because she has an economist's overview. Is that all right?

Status of Women committee  Thank you.

Status of Women committee  Yes, to answer the first part of your question, I think one of the factors that had a big impact on where Canada was and where Canada has got to is that there have been changes in economic currents, not only in Canada but also around the globe. At a certain point in Canada's hist