Financial security is one of the most important issues when we're looking at older adults broadly and in particular older women. Currently, 76% of unattached older women live in poverty.
When we look at the TFSA, we see it can be a helpful tool. I would offer that in our experience it is rarely the tool that older women think about or indeed that financial advisers are thinking about when they're thinking about older women. Typically they're looking at either public pensions or private pensions and pension security, which is a great concern. That's not to say TFSAs can't be helpful but as older adults across the life course, looking at the impact of gendered work, we see that many older women are dropping out of the workforce, if they have been in it at all, and have challenges with pension security above all things. Sometimes the ability to have enough money for a TFSA is actually the challenge.
I think it's a tool to be considered, but if I were thinking about what was most pressing, it would be things like GIS and OAS and the ability to use deferred annuities, which has been announced, and so on, that tend to be more top of mind.