Finance committee  I will ask Scott Cameron to answer your question. He has 40 seconds. Somebody else will provide more information after that.

Finance committee  Before I hand the floor over to Mr. Matier, who will provide more details on this, I would like to say that the use of models and multipliers is more a question of judgment than details. The same thing goes for our forecasts, which are different than the Department of Finance's forecasts.

Finance committee  I agree. We also talk about this on page 2 of our report, where it states that this increase is mostly attributable to $13.2 billion of new measures. You were talking about forecasts, but I think we are a little more optimistic than the Department of Finance. That may not be the case for employment, but that is definitely the case when it comes to economic growth.

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's the first time you called me Mr. Fréchette so I'm really happy with that. Mr. Chair, vice-chairs, and members of the committee, thank you again for the invitation to appear and discuss our April 2016 Economic and Fiscal Outlook, which was released today.

Finance committee  The OECD study looks at inequalities, not just at the level of savings. It looks at the gap in incomes. The Gini index does not look at income only. It is a question of wealth—

Finance committee  That's probably what a number of you will be hearing during the summer. You will meet families with two parents and two children whose annual income is $100,000. They will tell you that they need to pay their mortgage and their car and that they cannot contribute to a TFSA, at least not for the time being.

Finance committee  As I mentioned in my presentation, we have calculated the impact on tax expenditures. In terms of the impact on GDP growth, we are not there yet. As I was saying, more studies are needed. The TFSA program is relatively new. We don't have the required data to measure it yet.

Finance committee  That's right and that's sort of what the discussion has been about since the beginning. The maximum contribution amount is being raised from $5,500 to $10,000. Not everyone can make a maximum contribution of $10,000 from one year to another to reach $600,000 after 60 years. The inequality you are referring to is regressive.

Finance committee  Essentially, in the old age security, the payments will not be affected, but they will be injected in the TFSA indirectly. It's interesting to see the behaviour of people. That's why I said in my remarks we should do some more study on it. In doing a study on the total savings in Canada, the rate of total savings will give us some information.

Finance committee  I'm not commenting on the objective; I'm just saying it is a reality of the system.

Finance committee  It would kind of hold. We have to double-check that, but it would kind of hold. I think it's in the same neighbourhood in terms of percentage.

Finance committee  For the provinces, the cost is there for about one-third of that amount. That's why some provinces, including Quebec, are looking at that issue.

Finance committee  Time will tell. This is what we will do in the future with our fiscal sustainability report later this year, in October actually. We will assess the impact of Bill C-59 on that, the kind of impacts Bill C-59 would have on the health systems of Canada. One thing which is interesting is when the PBO did its update on the TFSA, we had a graph that showed the status quo and the $10,000 limit.

Finance committee  That's right.

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm the only witness who got some chocolate. I suspect it's a perk because I'm the last one to speak. Mr. Chair, vice-chairs, and members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to assist with your study of Bill C-59, Part 1. My comments are focused on the increase in the annual contribution limit for Tax-Free Savings Accounts (TFSAs), a measure the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer has studied in detail.