Thank you very much for having us here.
My name is Ted Cook. I am senior legislative chief with the tax legislation division of the Department of Finance. I am here this afternoon with Geoff Trueman, director of the business income tax division; Shawn Porter, director of the tax legislation division; and Ian Pomroy, a senior tax policy officer with the personal income tax division.
I'll simply highlight each of the measures in part 1, and then we can turn to your questions.
The first set of five measures relates to registered disability savings plans. The first one is an amendment with respect to the so-called 10-year rule. What the measure in the bill will provide is that when a holder of an RDSP makes a withdrawal, instead of having to pay back the entire assistance holdback amount, which is the Canada disability savings grants and bonds paid into the plan for the last 10 years, the payback would be $3 for each $1 withdrawn.
The second measure allows a rollover from RESPs, registered education savings plans, to an RDSP in certain circumstances when the RESP and the RDSP share a common beneficiary.
The third measure relates to the disability tax credit, and it provides that in circumstances in which the beneficiary of the RDSP ceases to be eligible for the disability tax credit, in certain circumstances the RDSP can remain open for up to five years following that event, rather than the current case in which the individual ceases to be eligible for the disability tax credit and the RDSP has to be wound up.
The next measure relates to maximum and minimum withdrawals from an RDSP. This measure has two components.
The first is to take the minimum annual withdrawal requirement, which is currently applicable only to plans that are primarily government-assisted, and extend that to all RDSPs once the beneficiary of the RDSP attains 60 years of age.
The second part of this measure takes the annual maximum withdrawal limit that is currently applicable to plans that are primarily government-assisted and provides that the amount that can be withdrawn in a year is the greater of two amounts, the currently existing amount and up to 10% of the property in the RDSP.
As well, there are a few administrative changes to facilitate and make life easier for issuers of RDSPs, providing that when an RDSP is transferred, more information will be provided by Human Resources and Skills Development Canada from one RDSP issuer to the other, and it will take out a couple of specific date deadlines to provide greater flexibility to issuers.
The next measure has to do with group sickness and accident insurance plans. This measure provides that on a go-forward basis, employer contributions to—