Finance committee  When we actually go that far, we don't really call it a forecast; it's actually a scenario. This is very standard practice in many international organizations and other organizations like ours in other countries. You do this kind of long-term analysis to provide a kind of picture of where things are going if everything else remains constant, if the policies don't change.

Finance committee  Over a very long period of time, we think the potential growth in Canada will be around 1.5%. That is mainly because of the impact of the demographics on the Canadian economy. In our last fiscal sustainability report, what we had was the potential growth, over a very long term, at about 1.5%.

Finance committee  With inflation, normally the assumption is that we'll stay with the target inflation, which is 2%—that's right—in the long term.

Finance committee  I'm not really in a position to comment. But I can say that medium-term or five-year forecasts are usually more useful for everyone.

Finance committee  Normally when you have this kind of change in the marginal tax rate for individuals in a family, there could be an impact on the behaviour of the individual in terms of how much labour they supply. In our estimate in our report, we showed that, if there is a family that benefits from this, normally the higher-income person in the family will actually effectively have a lower marginal effective wage rate because of the lower taxes, and the person with the lower income will have a higher marginal effective tax rate.

Finance committee  That's absolutely true.

Finance committee  As I said, there is no indication that this is the case because we haven't seen any—

Finance committee  We haven't seen any increase in the savings rates of Canadians as a result of TFSAs yet; it may happen over time. As I said earlier, the literature shows, from studies that have been done internationally and in Canada, that there isn't really a significant impact from changes like the TFSA tax changes on people's savings behaviour, and—

Finance committee  There is a study by the OECD. There are studies by university professors in Canada and in other countries who have looked at the impact of tax policy on savings behaviours of individuals. As I said, the results are mixed. Those that actually show a positive correlation between lower taxes and higher savings show a very small elasticity, a very small impact.

Finance committee  Some could be; as I said, the results are mixed. Some show no impact, some show negative impact, and some show a very small positive impact. Now, if there is a positive impact, that would be great: there would be more savings. But as I said, we haven't seen an increase in the savings rates of Canadians so far since the TFSA has been established.

Finance committee  That's right, and that's where the study starts, yes, in 2009.

Finance committee  I said that tax policies on savings instruments would not—

Finance committee  First, I think you're right on the number of people, the 10 million, I guess you quoted, who have invested in TFSAs—

Finance committee  If I may make a couple of points, first, there is no indication that the amount of money that has gone into TFSAs is actually new savings. It's very likely that most of it is the money that was saved in other instruments and has been transferred to a TFSA.

Finance committee  It is a small structural deficit, yes.