Yes. Thank you for your comments. It's nice to hear that people read our work, and that we are non-partisan.
Let me just give a specific example to answer your question. But first, the failure to index the new child benefit blew me away. I never could have thought that a new government would do that, which is I think is quite critical, since we've seen over the years when governments of all political stripes have tried indexation or de-indexation, that it ends up with pretty bad results.
But the one about the new child benefit, though, is very powerful. Let me give you an example; it's just simple arithmetic. In July 2016, when it starts, the Canada child benefit will pay a maximum of $6,400 a year to a low income household. That's a very hefty amount of money.
If inflation were to run at an annual rate of 2%, which is does these days, the purchasing power of that benefit will fall in the second year to $6,272. By 2020, the real value of the benefit will be only $5,903 in constant 2020 dollars. It doesn't sound like much to people, but it really adds up. That's the problem with indexation. It's quite sneaky.
The only reason that governments do that is to save money. So we were not happy about that aspect of it, and what we've asked for is an explanation of how the child benefit will be rolled out—