Thank you, Chair.
I want to speak with Ms. Rothman and Ms. Di Giovanni.
I like the fact that somebody has come here and said exactly what they feel about the taxation system. We've had a lot of people come and talk to us about the need. Some of them tiptoe around the GST cut, saying that it maybe helps a bit here and there. But the bottom line is that it's taking money out of the fiscal capacity of the federal government to reduce poverty. The budget we've had, in my view, doesn't even speak to the people on low incomes. The brochure that was used to talk about the budget said how Canadians would benefit from the budget; a family purchasing a $200,000 home would save $1,280 in GST. In the budget speech, it was a $350,000 home. A family buying $20,000 in new furnishings would save $200. So there are huge numbers of Canadians to whom this is irrelevant; it's never going to actually happen. My friend Rick will go through all the ways that low-income people benefit when they buy their Cadillacs and fancy houses, and all that sort of stuff.
But the fact is that if you're going to help those most in need you have to target.
And they said the GST actually helps low-income people because they don't pay tax.
But there are other measures, and you mentioned the child tax benefit, which we introduced in 1997. You indicated that it has actually reduced poverty by 8.9%. The Caledon Institute, whom I met with a while ago, had a higher number than that; I think they said it was somewhere in the range of 20%.
But I like the idea. I like personal income tax reductions. I like raising the threshold before you pay and lowering the lowest marginal rate. But I really think that what you're talking about here, which is the Canada child tax benefit, may be the way to go if we care at all about people who are the most marginalized.
We have heard, possibly, that if the universal child care benefit—