Status of Women committee  The other thing I'd add is that the tax system itself provides a deduction for expenses for child care. So if I incur expenses to put my child in day care, I get to deduct those costs up to a limit. So the tax system itself does account for the costs associated with child care.

Status of Women committee  The training tries to make people think about what the implications are that could result from any measure. So whenever any measure is going forward, the analysts are trained to think about what the implications could be. Let's say we had a measure that was very directed at a small business in the scientific and research type of analysis or businesses that are health oriented, then in some ways you could try to determine....

Status of Women committee  Specifically, which ones favour women and which ones favour men? What we can do is this. As we did with the 2006 and 2007 budgets, we've compiled the gender-based analysis for the 2008 budget. We can provide that to the committee, and it'll elaborate on which ones are more conducive to women and which ones are more conducive to men.

Status of Women committee  Yes, they were prepared by Finance.

Status of Women committee  Sure. First is the financial incentive to encourage provinces to eliminate their capital taxes. Basically, capital taxes are a very inefficient form of taxation. The federal government has eliminated its general capital taxes, but the provinces have capital taxes still in place.

Status of Women committee  I think, generally speaking, personal income tax measures are more conducive to gender-type analysis than are corporate-type measures. In the personal income tax system, when you make a change to it, you're directly affecting individuals. So when you're directly affecting individuals, you can do a gender-based analysis on that: What's the impact for women?

Status of Women committee  This is an internal departmental website. We can see whether the cabinet's view on certain issues is posted, but we will find out whether we can give the committee access to the site.

Status of Women committee  I'm not sure I understand your question. Do you want to know whether we can compare the 2006 measures with those for 2008? If so, what is it you want to compare?

Status of Women committee  Sure, we can look into it. It's not a template of GBA analysis; it's a template we use to brief on budget measures. It's basically this: issue, background, analysis, provincial impacts, legislative impacts, environmental impacts, gender-based analysis impacts, and so on. It just lays out the titles that go into the analysis, which we ensure is provided to the minister when measures are going forward for the budget.

Status of Women committee  Yes.

Status of Women committee  May I answer your question? I was not present at all the consultations, but I am sometimes there when groups come in to request changes to the income tax system, and so on. In addition, together with the minister, our department took part in some of the regional consultations. This happens occasionally, but not for all the consultations.

Status of Women committee  Yes, gender-based analysis was definitely conducted on the tax-free savings account. I can go into it a little bit. I have that material with me.

Status of Women committee  A tax-free savings account tends to benefit the bottom range of tax filers. Three-quarters of the benefits go to those in the bottom two tax brackets. The reason is that, first of all, there's a cap on the amount that can be put in. Second, when the savings come out of a tax-free savings account, they're not going to affect the Canada child tax benefit, the GST credit, or the GIS, etc., because when it comes out, it's not taxed and not included as income.

Status of Women committee  You do have to have some income to do that.

Status of Women committee  It's true that generally speaking men earn more income than women do, but the tax-free savings account is actually one of the things that will help women in those circumstances. First of all, the tax-free savings account, that $5,000, isn't tied to income. So if you're at home working, you're still allowed to accumulate that $5,000.