Okay, tax policies. What I would like to ask you then, in terms of your calculation, is, if it won't affect behaviour.... There are 11 million Canadians whose behaviour has been affected, so I want to ask you some questions on the analysis.
I'm a chartered accountant. When I worked at Price Waterhouse, if we did an analytical piece, we would endeavour to do both sides of the analysis for the client. I would like to suggest that you've only done half the job, and I'd love to get the other half of the analysis, because we have two tax models.
An RRSP has an immediate cost to the treasury. Take the example of a nice 24-year-old person who has just graduated from school. If they put $1,000 into a tax vehicle named the “Registered Retirement Savings Plan”, there is an immediate cost to the treasury. Further, given the time value of money—you can look up the algorithms, and there are a number of them—the reality is that if you defer the payment of tax for seven years, you've pretty well saved that tax dollar. This 24-year-old student is going to declare his or her RRSP perhaps 40 years hence, so the deferral is multiples of seven years. There's an enormous tax—as you would say—cost to the treasury.
You contrast that with the tax-free savings account. That individual has already paid the tax on that investment. He or she did not get any benefit from the government. What they did was pay the full tax—there was no cost to the treasury—and then put their $1,000 into a tax-free savings account. That's the basic difference.
The third piece of the missing analysis in terms of your work that I'm very fearful of.... You're so worried about the loss by 2080, but as time goes, that young man who has made that investment at 24 years old is going to actually contribute to a pool of capital. Whether it goes into mutual funds, investments of other kinds, the equity market, or the bond market, that is a pool of capital that future entrepreneurs will be able to draw upon and invest from, and it will strengthen the economy. That is the piece that I believe, sir, is missing in your analysis. Could you please comment on that?