The tax credit itself is only one component. It is a single initiative to encourage families to enrol their children in physical fitness activities.
Following Budget 2006, there was a committee that was formed, the Expert Panel for the Children's Fitness Tax Credit, and they recommended additional changes to the fitness tax credit that was introduced in Budget 2006.
The committee itself recommended a review of the credit and its performance, but acknowledged that just given the way the credit works.... It takes effect for the 2007 tax year; therefore, families are going to receive a credit on their 2007 income tax forms that they will submit in 2008. The department will get some data at the end of 2008 to determine how much people have claimed. Very detailed data on individuals and how many children that we could potentially draw from would be available in 2009. That's for the first year. And then for 2008, to determine how that would have changed will take us another year.
The expert panel itself recognized that it would take at least four years to get two years' worth of tax data. Our intention, from a Department of Finance point of view, is to say the tax credit itself, as a single initiative, as part of a plan to encourage children to enrol in activities, will require the time to do a comparative analysis once the data becomes available.