The Toronto Star's Carol Goar writes about CCPA Senior Economist Armine Yalnizyan's recent testimony to a Senate committee asking for an analysis of this year's federal budget from a woman's perspective.
As Goar reports [2], Yalnizyan concludes: "Regrettably, women appear as an afterthought in this year's budget."
Goar writes: "[Yalnizyan] pointed out that there were six references to women in the entire document. She enumerated some of opportunity costs of the $200 billion in cumulative tax cuts that Flaherty flagged proudly in his budget speech: lost child-care spaces, unbuilt social housing, inadequate immigrant services and underfinanced job training programs. And she reminded parliamentarians that women have been waiting 11 years for the improvements in public services that the post-deficit era was supposed to bring.
"But her central argument was that women have lost out badly in the tax cuts the Tories have distributed. Using figures from Statistics Canada, she showed that every $1 in tax relief that has gone to Canadians in the lowest tax bracket (those with taxable incomes below $37,885) has been matched by a $12 tax break to Canadians in the three higher tax brackets.
"Two-thirds of women fall into the lowest tax bracket."
Yalnizyan's submission to the committee is available on this website, in Research and Publications [3].