I'm talking about the child credit, for starters, which doesn't apply to them at all, actually. So they're losing out on the jobs, and now they're losing out on the benefits, which is a huge problem. I just wanted to highlight that, because it is very important to look at.
One of the things I have tried to push for a long time is to use the gender lens when we do policy, and also the gender-racial lens or immigrant lens. Call it the multicultural lens, or whatever you want to call it. Without using that, we really miss out on a whole lot of things. Obviously this is one good example of how we're missing out on those families.
The other question is about income splitting, and that was mentioned by you, Ms. Bose, and actually also by Ms. Fyfe. With respect to farmers, it's the same thing, actually. Income splitting doesn't really help, because there isn't a lot of money. Income splitting for the purpose of income tax is pension splitting. According to the analysis I've looked at, which the Caledon Institute did, if you have pensionable earnings of $100,000, you save $7,000. Then when you're down to $30,000 pensionable earnings, you are at a lower rate, and then you start to really peter out until you have none.
Most of the families that are arriving, actually because of their number of years here, have very little of that.
In farming, again you mentioned, Ms. Fyfe, the need for a homemaker's pension or a pension for farm women. Actually, many European countries do in fact have that for women, which they can pay into.
My question to all three of you, though, when we are talking about women's economic security, is whether you have--whatever you call it--a homemaker's pension or strictly a pension for women.
In your case, you're working on the farm. How would you structure that? That's my first question.
Ms. Bose and Ms. Spencer, could you include in your answer how you would deal with the fact that most immigrant women come here at a certain age, an adult age, so that they actually don't have a full work lifetime to contribute to this kind of scheme?