Finance committee  That's reflected in our projection, which we show over the medium term as a slight deficit of about $2.5 billion over the last three years of the projection.

Finance committee  We are showing the actual structural numbers and roughly over the period we are essentially roughly balanced. There's a slight structural deficit in 2018-19 and 2019-20, but it's not really that big; it's about $1 billion.

Finance committee  It is a small structural deficit, yes.

Finance committee  Potentially, yes. One of the benefits of the TFSA for the pensioners is that they can essentially protect the income they get from the TFSA from the income-testing programs of OAS and GIS. So yes, potentially, part of the cost for the government is the higher payments through tho

Finance committee  Overall, the income distribution or the distributional impact of the TFSA does not change significantly because of the increase in the contribution room, because a lot of it actually cannot be used over time since it is too big for most of the families, who will exhaust their sav

Finance committee  Again, sir, going back to what I said earlier, we don't really pass judgment on the validity of the policy. Policy is proposed and made, and we just provide an estimate of the consequences of those policies.

Finance committee  There again, as I think Mr. Fréchette said, we don't pass judgment on the policies. But on the point of savings, in fact, in our report we looked at the literature in terms of the impact of tax measures on people's savings behaviour. Our conclusion from reading the literature was

Finance committee  No, sir, we did not.

Finance committee  There are some measures; I don't have those measures right now, but there are costs overall as a percent of the GDP. The RRSP, I believe, costs around 0.6% of the GDP right now.

Finance committee  Well, it's forgone revenue for the government, because if the financial asset moves from the taxable instruments to non-taxable TFSAs, that is forgone revenue for the government for that amount of money.

Finance committee  Well, costs will go up over time as the contribution room increases, and that potential forgone revenue will increase over time.

Finance committee  That's right. The cost will obviously increase as the contribution room increases over time. But also, one has to put the cost increases in the context of the size of the economy. In the long run, our estimate is that by 2080—which is obviously a very long period of time—the cost

Finance committee  The Department of Finance provides an annual report on tax expenditures, but those are just the current spending, current estimates. What we have done in the past is we have tried to provide a projection for the cost of those kinds of major tax expenditures over time. That's what

Finance committee  I assume 16% is the correct number, but I can't talk to that right now.

Finance committee  Well, again, it depends on how you compare it with other programs. That is very close to what the cost of the RRSP is right now.