Bill C-2 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Income Tax Act

This enactment amends the Income Tax Act to reduce the second personal income tax rate from 22% to 20.‍5% and to introduce a new personal marginal tax rate of 33% for taxable income in excess of $200,000. It also amends other provisions of that Act to reflect the new 33% rate. In addition, it amends that Act to reduce the annual contribution limit for tax-free savings accounts from $10,000 to its previous level with indexation ($5,500 for 2016) starting January 1, 2016.

Income Tax Act

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to Bill C-2. I want to focus my discussion today on the tax-free savings account.

I find some of the comments from the other side of the floor about the tax-free savings account, which we initiated, very interesting. We are very proud of this initiative and I think many Canadians appreciate it.

From going around my riding of Foothills in southern Alberta during the campaign and during other times during the year, I know Canadians, especially those in my riding, appreciated the increase in the tax-free savings account. Canadians use this to save for their children's education, or to buy their first home, or maybe to have a comfortable retirement. However, the fact is that the tax-free savings account allows Canadians to save.

Some members opposite claimed that this was just a way for us to pander to our base. If the middle-class Canadians who supported TFSA is our base, I would be more than happy to take them.

Members say that these dollars do no go to the Treasury and that they could be better spent. That is an arrogant statement, especially coming from a government that horribly has gotten the math wrong on its middle-class tax cut, which will now go into $30-billion annual deficits despite having pledged $10-billion deficits. Its financial plan is a mess and yet it is telling Canadians that it does not want them to have the benefits of the tax-free savings account because it feels it could spend those dollars better than them. It is extremely disingenuous to tell Canadians that a government can spend their dollars better than they can.

I want to talk a bit about what the tax-free savings account really means to Canadians.

We heard members opposite say that this was something very few Canadians could use, that it was a tax haven for the wealthy.

It should be noted that 11 million Canadians have tax-free savings accounts. That is certainly more than just wealthy Canadians. Eighty per cent of those are making $80,000 or less. Of those who maxed out their TFSA, 60% are making $60,000 or less annually. These are not wealthy Canadians. These are hard-working Canadians who are making difficult choices for their families, difficult choices that they feel will benefit them in the future, whether that is saving for their first house, or their children's education or for retirement. These are hard-working Canadians making the financial choices that they feel are best for them.

Since when does the government step in and say that it knows better than them when it comes to savings? These Canadians are simply trying to have a sound financial plan. We should be encouraging these things, not eliminating them. The key is that Canadians should have the opportunity to make decisions that are best for them. They are making choices that suit their priorities. Certainly some may have an RRSP, but the TFSA has much more flexibility than an RRSP. What is wrong with giving Canadians another option, another opportunity to save for their futures?

Canadians want to have those choices so they can put money away when times are good. Certainly for Albertans, many of them may be tapping into their tax-free savings account when times are difficult. This is a great chance for them to put funds away when times are good to help them through when times are difficult. When times are tough and they do not have that savings, they will rely on government social programs, whether it is EI or other programs. Any time they can be self-sufficient and rely on their own savings is a benefit for the government.

The new Liberal government's approach to this is misguided. It wants to take away something that has been extremely popular. As I said, 11 million Canadians have a TFSA. The Liberals want to take away something that allows Canadians to make their own choices in whatever their unique savings goals might be. Not only do they want to take away the TFSA, but they will be implementing a mandatory CPP increase. This will not only hurt Canadian taxpayers—an additional $1,000 a year—but it will also impact Canadian business owners because they will have to also match those fees.

Why would the government put in a mandatory savings when it has this great opportunity of which many Canadians can take advantage? They can put as much or as little into it, whatever they feel best benefits them and their families.

What kind of message is this sending to Canadians when the Liberal government is saying that it wants to take away some of their options for savings, but at the same time it will use those dollars to try to mitigate this massive deficit it will pass on to the taxpayers. The government will be taking with one hand and taking with the other. That could be extremely frustrating for Canadians who are trying to save for their future.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer released a report earlier this year that stated household indebtedness and financial vulnerability in Canada were increasing. It showed household debt servicing capacities were continuing to trend upward, while continuing capacity to meet those debt obligations was diminishing. It shows that we should be giving Canadians every opportunity to save when times are good, so when times are tough, like they are right now in Alberta, Atlantic Canada and Saskatchewan, they have an opportunity to have savings they can tap into when they need it.

Reducing the TFSA contribution limits will simply reduce the ability of Canadians to save for retirement and to protect themselves during those economic downturns. TFSAs remove barriers for all Canadians to maximize their financial position. It really is a shame the Liberal government wants to decrease the ability of Canadians to use this tool to save for their future.

The other issue at hand with Bill C-2 is the middle-class tax cut. I am sure this vision was burned into the minds of Canadians during the election campaign. The Prime Minister went from coast to coast to coast and said, “A billion dollar tax cut for the middle class, paid for by a $3 billion increase on high income earners”.

However, the Liberals got their numbers completely wrong. This middle-class tax cut is anything but revenue-neutral. In fact, the Parliamentary Budget Officer has said that this tax reform, and I will not call it a tax cut, will cost Canadians $8.9 billion over the next six years. That is anything but revenue-neutral and it shows that the Liberal government will be taking away with one hand and taking away with the other. They say that this is a middle-class tax cut, but average Canadians who qualify for this will only get $6 a week. I do not think that will have a profound impact on stimulating our economy or making a big impact for middle-class Canadians. In fact, middle-class Canadians will not benefit from this at all. The group that makes closer to $200,000 will benefit the most.

We will be penalizing those hard-working Canadians, usually those who have started businesses, created jobs, grown our economy and who worked extremely hard to be in that higher tax bracket. We will be taking $3 billion away from them, and it will not be making that big of an impact.

We should be taking a hard look at who actually will be benefiting from this middle tax cut. It is not a tax cut. It will be an $8.9-billion debt for which each and every Canadian taxpayers will have to pay.

We should not be impacting or discouraging Canadians from saving. We should not be discouraging those hard-working Canadians who are job creators, who have started businesses, who have helped grow our economy. What I see in Bill C-2 are miscalculations impacting our business owners and our entrepreneurs. Also it will not have the financial impact the Liberals have said it will have.

I encourage all members of the House to vote against Bill C-2. This will have not have the financial impact the Liberals have said it will, other than increasing our massive and growing debt. It comes down to this. Should Canadians be taking financial advice from a Liberal government that could not get the math right on its middle-class tax cut, is arguing with its own financial staff on the amount of the Conservative surplus, and will now have a $30 billion annual debt that it will put on Canadians? I do not think we should be taking financial advice from that party or that government.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Mr. Speaker, the member opposite said that our party would take with one hand and take with the other. That could not be further from the truth. Let us look at the numbers. They show that 6.7% of Canadians max out TFSAs. That is a fact. Why does the party opposite want to double that number? The Conservatives wanted to double the number because it pandered to their base.

The member opposite also said that the government would take that money, and that we were arrogant about how we would spend it. Is it arrogant to come up with a Canada child benefit that would help nine out of ten Canadian families and that would pull 315,000 children out of poverty?

The party opposite's finance minister, who has disappeared off the face of the earth, stated that future generations would pay for this. Our grandkids and great-grandkids would pay for the TFSA doubling. That is not fair to Canadians. It is not fair to Canadian families. What the Liberal Party would do is put money back in the pockets of families and in the pockets of people in the middle class.

If only 6.7% of Canadians maxed TFSAs, what was the rationale behind doubling that amount?

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

Mr. Speaker, first, on the child tax credit, the liberals got their math very wrong on the middle-class tax cut. I am really going to be interested to see what your math is like on the child benefit and whether it will indeed benefit nine out of ten Canadian families.

On the TFSA, what is the harm in doubling it? You are so concerned that so few Canadians actually used it? Actually 11 million Canadians have a TFSA account. This is a very profound and significant opportunity for Canadians to save for their future. The key is to save for what they feel is best and their priorities, not the government's.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Anthony Rota]

I want to remind hon. members that they are speaking through the Chair and not directly across.

Questions and comments, the hon. member for Regina—Lewvan.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Foothills for his impassioned defence of tax-free savings accounts. Of course the question before the House is not whether we should have TFSAs; it is whether the contribution limit should be $5,500 or $10,000.

The member for Foothills talked about the large number of Canadians who might use TFSAs to some extent. However, does he acknowledge that fewer than 7% of Canadians actually reached that maximum of $5,500 in contributions, and that therefore it would be a relatively small and relatively affluent group that would gain from increasing that limit to $10,000?

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the key phrase in that question was “affluent Canadians”. With all the stats and facts that are out there, the Liberals still feel that the tax-free savings account is somehow a tax shelter for the wealthy. Sixty per cent of those people who maxed out their TFSA made $60,000 or less. I would like to hear in any community across Canada where people feel that an annual salary of $60,000 somehow makes someone affluent.

This is an opportunity for hard-working Canadians to make difficult choices, which some of them are choosing a savings account as a priority over many material things. However, the key is that it is a choice they themselves make. What is wrong with allowing Canadians to make those choices for themselves, rather than giving those dollars over to government where they have no control over it, to a government that now has $30 billion in annual deficits?

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Moose Jaw—Lake Centre—Lanigan, SK]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to speak today on what I think should be more appropriately titled the Liberal government's legislation on misplaced priorities, because that is exactly what Bill C-2 is.

The government of the day claims that this is a tax cut for middle-class Canadians and will help stimulate the economy. In fact, all it is is a bit of a shell game.

Liberals are attempting on the one hand to suggest to Canadians that this is a good thing, that it is reducing taxes, which is certainly something that our government believes in, since when we were in government for nine years, we reduced taxes over 140 times. The reason it is a shell game is that while there may be some modest gains in tax relief for some Canadians, on the other hand the Liberals have started to reduce the amount of contributions allowed in TFSAs.

The tax-free savings account was an initiative that our government brought in several years ago, the most important savings vehicle that Canadians have seen since the advent of the RRSP. It has been incredibly popular, and it was well received by Canadians from all income brackets.

My colleagues previously have talked about the fact that 60% of Canadians who maxed out their TFSAs have modest incomes. I always say that any time we give Canadians an opportunity to save money in a tax-free vehicle, that has to be a good thing, so when did it become wrong for Canadians to have the ability to save more of their hard-earned money tax-free? When did it become wrong to do that? However, that is exactly what the government apparently is saying, because it is planning to reduce the TFSA contribution limit from $10,500 to $5,500. Liberals are denying Canadians the opportunity to put $5,000 more per year into a tax-free savings account.

I recognize that perhaps not all Canadians would be able to contribute the full amount each and every year, but the TFSAs have been structured so that there is a carry-over element. If people cannot max out their contributions in one year, they do not lose it the next year. No, that unused amount can be carried over, and carried over almost into perpetuity, so that several years down the road if a retired couple wants to sell their house in which they have built up a great deal of equity to travel in their golden years, they could take the money from the sale of their house and put it into a TFSA to the maximum amount.

However, the Liberals feel that this is not the right route to take. Rather than allowing Canadians more opportunities to save more money, they want to reduce that amount. Their argument is that only the wealthy can afford to contribute $10,500 a year, but that is not what they really are saying. They may say that publicly, but what they mean and what they intend is that if a majority of Canadians maxed out their contributions at $10,500, it would cost the government money in lost tax revenue. That is really the crux behind this move, because the government is in trouble.

Although the Liberals promised what they considered to be modest $10-billion-a-year deficits in the first three years of their term, now are going to be incurring at least $30-billion deficits for the first several years of their mandate. They said they would be able to balance the books by 2019, by the time of the next election. It is now admitted by the government's own officials that doing so will be an impossible task.

The government needs more revenue. Allowing Canadians to save more in a tax-free environment would deny the government the much-needed revenue it so desires. What do the Liberals do? Their approach is to spend more money. They say that spending more money will ultimately create a healthier and larger economy. This Keynesian approach has never worked in the past and it will not work this time, but that is the approach that the government has.

I suspect that some of that comes from a long history of Liberal mismanagement in the economy. If one only takes a look at the current Prime Minister's father and his regime, when former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau left office, his Liberal government was spending $1.03 for every $1 that it took in in revenue.

No wonder we have such a huge debt in this country, a debt that we are still trying to pay off, thanks to a previous Liberal government. Apparently the apple did not fall far from the tree, because the current Prime Minister seems to be taking the same approach as his father, an approach that has left this country in massive debt.

This is unacceptable, but obviously there are options. Any government has choices. How can it increase its revenue? How can it take in the amount of money it needs to produce programs and balance the budget, as it apparently desires to do?

The obvious choice is to raise taxes, but that is never a popular choice for any government. The other option is to find projects that might increase employment and consequently increase tax revenue, both personal and corporate. The government would argue that this is exactly what it is doing with its stimulus spending: by putting money into the economy, it would create those jobs, create those projects, and in return receive additional revenue.

Unfortunately, most economists worth their salt would tell us that stimulus really only works if a government or a country is in a recession, which Canada is not. Our economy is growing. Perhaps it is growing more slowly than we would like, but we are most certainly not in a recession, so there is no need for stimulus spending. What is needed is for the private sector to initiate projects that would bring in that much-needed tax revenue, projects that would create employment.

What have we got out there? Is there anything on the horizon that we could point to that might actually fit the bill? There is something, and it is called the energy east pipeline. Here is a project that is shovel ready, would not cost the Liberal government or taxpayers a dime, and would create literally thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in tax revenue between personal and corporate income tax, yet the government sees fit to put so many impositions and prohibitions on the start of this project that the chances of energy east ever seeing the light of day are slim. Hopefully, chances are not zero, but that is what is probably going to happen.

This is why I say that this piece of legislation is misguided in its priorities. There are alternatives. There are options the government could employ to increase its revenue base without costing the Canadian taxpayer a dime, but the Liberal government does not want to do that. Instead, it is going to punish and penalize average hard-working Canadians by reducing the amount of money that those same Canadians can contribute to their tax-free savings accounts.

The Liberal government is making the wrong choices. It has misguided priorities. At the end of the day, we will find that Bill C-2, the first piece of legislation the government has introduced, will end up costing Canadians far more than they will save.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member across the aisle made a good presentation. It covered a lot of the previous government's strategy around investment, which resulted in creating $150 billion more in debt, which is part of a more recent history than the 1970s.

I found a couple of the member's comments interesting. He said that investing in Canada should only be done during a recession and that jobs can only be created during a recession. Did the previous government put us in two recessions to create jobs?

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Moose Jaw—Lake Centre—Lanigan, SK]

Mr. Speaker, once again, as is common with most Liberals and with most newly elected Liberals, they have this sense of revisionist history. Let us talk about what actually happened.

Back in 2008 when the global recession hit, every G20 country agreed that the best way to get out of the recession was to stimulate the economy by investing money in infrastructure. I was part of that debate in this place. What happened during that debate? The Liberals, who were then in third place, and the NDP, which was the official opposition, criticized our government for not putting enough money into stimulus. In other words, had the Liberals or the NDP had their way, we would have had a larger debt than we do today. Our deficit would have been larger if they had had their way. For anyone on the Liberal benches to say that we created a deficit that they would not have created is absolutely factually incorrect, and the records show that.

Second, we entered into a deficit situation because of the global recession, but we got out of it. In our last years in office, we balanced the budget. That is something the Liberal government will probably never do in its short mandate, which I expect to be only four years.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my neighbour MP from Moose Jaw—Lake Centre—Lanigan for not running in Regina—Lewvan. I would also like to thank him for his able chairmanship of the government operations committee, on which I also serve. Finally, I would like to thank the member for his speech.

I would like to pick up on the point he raised about TFSA contribution limits being cumulative from one year to the next. It seems to me one of the problems with the contribution limit of $10,000 is that over the years and decades it would enable wealthy Canadians to accumulate pools of hundreds of thousands of dollars of investments that would be completely untaxed, and this could contribute significantly to growing inequality and would erode public finances. I wonder what the member thinks about that prospect, looking into the future.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Moose Jaw—Lake Centre—Lanigan, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Regina for thanking me for not running in his riding.

If we took a poll of all Canadians, regardless of income level, and asked them this simple question: “Do you agree that you should be allowed to contribute more money to a tax-free savings account, rather than less?”, the answer would come back with a clear “Yes, we want to have the ability to invest more money in a tax-free environment if we can.”

This does not allow only the wealthy to put money into an account. I have many people in my riding, most of whom are not wealthy or affluent, as the government would suggest. When I talk to them about the TFSA, many of them say that if they were to sell their house or come into an inheritance or somehow come into additional dollars, they would like to have the ability to put the money into an account where it would be tax-free. They do not want to be denied that ability. Whether or not they max out or contribute to it in totality over the years is incidental, but at least knowing it is there is something they agree with.

I fall back on words I said in my initial presentation. When in Canada did it become a bad thing to allow Canadians to contribute more money tax-free? Apparently it was when the Liberal government got elected.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise in the final hours of debate on Bill C-2.

We all recognize that this piece of legislation, rushed into the House in December, a forerunner of the budget scheduled for March 22, was intended to fulfill a number of misguided campaign promises in time for a new taxation year. I must say that over the hours of debate since the speech by the Minister of Finance, his answers in debate and in question period, his pronouncements in various fora across Canada, Canadians are getting a very clear and concerning picture of where the government intends to go in terms of taxation, the collection of Canadians' hard-earned tax dollars, and of spending, namely, that it intends to go on a mega disbursement spree of those same hard-earned tax dollars.

The economic situation in Canada today, which a number of speakers have remarked upon, is truly a crisis in parts of the country walloped by the crash of resource prices, but it is not at all like the 2008-09 global recession. The fact is that Canada is not in recession today. Focused stimulation, tax cuts, incentives, and decisive and courageous support of projects such as pipelines and power projects are, indeed, appropriate for provinces hit hard by the resource downturn. However, massive, expansionary government spending, growth of the debt, increased debt servicing, and the mortgaging of our children's futures is simply not justified.

The minister's much touted middle-class tax cut will, he proclaimed, put more money into the pockets of Canadians who need it. The tax cut does, modestly, do that, but the finance minister himself estimates that it will amount to barely $10 a week for the middle class and then, as our NDP colleagues have pointed out, only a portion of the middle class. At the same time, the Liberals promised that the total cost of the tax cuts would be offset by a new tax on Canada's most affluent taxpayers. Again, a reality check from Finance Canada reveals that, in fact, there will be at least a billion dollar shortfall in the Liberals' estimate, or, more appropriately, guesstimate, which is hardly reassuring as we anticipate the coming budget.

I will move on to the minister's ill-advised trimming of the tax-free savings accounts. The TFSA, as we know, was created by our previous Conservative government, along with more than 180 tax cuts made between 2006 and 2015. These tax cuts combined to give Canadians across all income groups significantly greater take-home income and reduced the federal tax burden to the lowest level in half a century. About half of adult Canadians today have tax-free savings accounts, which is a very high level of participation, indeed, for a program that only began in 2009.

These numbers have been cited before, but I am proud to remind the government again that of those TFSA investors who took advantage of last year's $10,000 limit, fully 60% earned $60,000 or less, which refutes the Prime Minister and the finance minister's characterization of the TFSA as a tool for the rich only. The tax-free savings account is also a particularly important retirement savings tool for seniors who can no longer take advantage of RRSPs, registered retirement savings plans.

A majority of Canadians supported and still support the $10,000 limit. Public opinion polls reflected this and still reflect this. That support is consistent across all age groups, income levels, and regions of our country. That support was reflected in one of the first e-petitions to the government, an e-petition that I was proud to sponsor. Folks at home can find and consider that petition at petitions.parl.gc.ca, listed under e-3, with the key words “taxation”, and “tax-free savings account”. This petition has accumulated almost 5,000 signatures, even though the government plowed ahead in reducing this year's TFSA contribution level by half. The petition is still open for another month, and frustrated Canadians can still register their unhappiness with the government's decision until April.

The government tried to justify the gutting of the annual savings limits with the excuse that the TFSA cost the government too much. The federal government spends much more every year to support the very generous indexed pensions of government employees. Those public service pensions are paid for with the hard-earned tax dollars of the 80% of Canadians who do not work for the government, who have much less generous employer pension plans, or who must provide entirely for their own retirement.

In my constituency, the wonderfully diverse middle-class community of Thornhill, TFSAs have become an important part of taxpayers' retirement savings portfolios, an important part, again, of our senior citizens' retirement savings portfolios. That is evident across all income levels, as national polls show.

Making the retirement savings process even more challenging and burdensome, the new federal government has agreed to collect for the spendthrift Government of Ontario the job-killing payroll taxes from employees and employers for the so-called Ontario retirement pension plan. The ORPP is sold as a top-up to the Canada pension plan, but it will take fully 40 years to reach its modest annual payback level. Why now? What is the rush?

Well, Premier Wynne's government, in an amazing blaze of unintended transparency, in its 2014 budget, revealed that the ORPP is not really designed for retirees. The budget document revealed that ORPP is really a tax grab. It will help bail out the debt and deficit created by the provincial Liberal government's misspending. The 2014 budget said precisely that by “encouraging more Ontarians to save through a proposed new Ontario Retirement Pension Plan, new pools of capital would be available for Ontario-based projects such as building roads, bridges and new transit.”

The federal government is now complicit by recently agreeing to collect for Ontario the job-killing employment taxes, not for the workers of today who will see little, if any, eventual benefit, but effectively to create a new slush fund for its provincial Liberal cousins who have created the largest sub-national debt in the world.

A variation of an old joke, not that far from reality is, ask an Ontario Liberal how to create a small business and they will say, take a medium-sized business and tax it down to size.

I see my remaining time is short, so I will briefly return to the Minister of Finance's remarks, when he introduced Bill C-2, in which he talked about growth and investment in the budget that will be tabled on March 22.

We on this side of the House are very concerned about the dark reality for Canadian taxpayers and the Canadian economy that will, we believe, define those words. The growth that the minister and Prime Minister are trying, unwisely, to create will be in annual deficits: $30 billion, $40 billion, or more, in expansionary spending that simply cannot be justified. The investment will be the billions of dollars of deeper debt that our children and grandchildren will eventually have to confront.

If the Liberals are really serious about growing the economy, the minister must come forward with a jobs plan that will actually help get Canadians back to work. He should abandon the rush to recklessly push Canadians' billions of hard-earned tax dollars into spontaneously confected, inadequately planned infrastructure projects or to impose new regulations and taxes based on half-baked theories.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Mr. Speaker, we inherited an economy that was not moving forward and not in good shape due to the low-growth policies of the party opposite.

When the party opposite talks about the shell game the Liberals are playing, let us talk about the party that invented the shell game. After seven straight deficits, the party opposite said it was going to come up with a plan, that it would come up with a surplus or a balanced budget in the year before the election.

Let us talk about the shell game. There was $900 million put back into the budget from its own public servants' sick leave; the $2 billion rainy fund was put into the shell game; the GM shares were sold and also put into the shell game; and lapsed funding for veterans affairs was put into the shell game; and EI training was thrown in too.

Canadians have woken up to a low-growth, no-growth economic style from the party opposite. Good government and good government policies are for the many, not the few. With only 6.3% of Canadians using tax-free savings accounts, doubling that number pandered to the few.

Would the member opposite not concede that good government policy, good governance, is for the many, not the few, and not like the doubling of the tax-free savings accounts?

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question and for refraining from making the implausible claim that the Liberals found Canada in a deficit when they took power. Last year, the Canadian economy grew by 1.2%, and as the parliamentary budget officer has said many times, although this was ignored by the finance minister, we left the government in a surplus and in growth.

In response to the member's question with respect the tax-free savings account, I do not know how many times members on our side will say this today but fully 60% of the people who maxed out at the $10,000 level, many of whom are seniors who have no other place to put their money because they are forced to cash in their RRSPs at the age of 72, earn $60,000 or significantly less.

When I was knocking on doors in Thornhill last year, I met young people, university students and graduates, some of whom were paying both for university and making contributions to the TFSA. It is not for the affluent. Of the middle-income earners of all ages who made significant contributions, many chose not to buy an SUV but rather to drive a used vehicle and put some of that money aside. For those who are self-employed, the TFSA represents a real opportunity for long-term maximum benefit, and an even greater benefit than the RRSP.

I again think that the Liberal government was misguided into playing class warfare in trimming the TFSA.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Thornhill just said that 60% of the people who maxed out at the $10,000 level were earning $60,000 or less. How can the member possibly have any data on who maxed out at $10,000?