Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Minister, we've heard some interesting testimony on the tax proposals. I want to point out that the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives presented and also provided a paper. I am going to quickly read a point from it, “Nearly all of the families who benefit most from income sprinkling are headed by male income earners, which undercuts claims that the current loophole is positive for gender equality, and almost half of all benefits flow to the richest 5% of families”.
We also heard testimony this morning that I found very interesting. It was somewhat of a different take on gender inequality. This might not be verbatim, but one of the things said was that women were used to keeping a low-tax lifestyle, and that continuing these types of tax strategies would actually increase women's inequality and the 28% gender gap, in terms of encouraging income sprinkling, predominantly to women—if the majority of these corporations are headed by men and if their spouses are women—and that going forward with this would actually encourage that sprinkling to create that low-tax lifestyle, and wouldn't close the inequality and the gender gap.
Again, this is based on testimony I've heard, so I'm curious. Based on the information you and the department have received, can you address some of the claims that closing these loopholes would actually hurt women?