Okay. I'll just finish the point I was making in relation to the tax-free savings accounts, because in addition to the Statistics Canada data that is available to the Department of Finance, there is, of course, also the data from the tax returns themselves, income statistics from the Canada Revenue Agency.
It's very clear there that with the RRSPs, which have given tax returns or tax refunds to people to motivate them or give them an incentive to put money into tax-supported savings, that women have far less financial capacity to save.
The tax-free savings accounts are going to be out of the reach of most of the lowest-income people in Canada, and there is virtually no benefit to them whatsoever. I would like to actually warn this committee that the claim that the tax-free savings accounts are a special boon to low-income people is a deliberate policy choice on the part of the proponents of this account to draw attention away from the fact that it is probably the very biggest tax benefit that has been produced to benefit high-income taxpayers and mid-high-income taxpayers for a long time.
This introduces the principle of consumption taxation as opposed to income taxation. It's inherently biased in favour of people who are able to save money and who don't have to spend all of their money. Countries all around the world have flirted with the consumption tax as the new base and have repeatedly backed away from it on the basis that it drives the gap between high income and low income further apart than income taxation does.
The TFSA is a vehicle designed to introduce consumption taxation for the benefit of high-income people in Canada. It is not going to benefit women in Canada.
Thank you.