Donations and Tax Refunds

Well, I didn't get as much bang for the buck as I thought with donations.  During this Family Day Holiday in Saskatchewan, I'm using StudioTax to work out my tax refund.  For an $8000 donation, my refund was not $4000 as I thought, but only about $3400.  I also noted that the $100/month Universal Child Tax Benefit for my toddler was also clawed back.  What a stupid program that is.  You get $100/month from the Feds for preschoolers to offset childcare, but then they just claw it back after you do your tax return.  I guess it helps pay down debt temporarily during the year.  Just an example of why I don't like RRSP anymore.  The Feds will just claw back OAS and whatever else one's entitled too.  Of course, these entitlements may not exist by the time I retire because of the extreme demographic shift taking place because of the aging population.  Did take advantage of the Federal Fitness Child Tax credit for kids and the paltry active family benefits (Saskatchewan tax credit).  Also had to dig out my trading records from 2003 and 2008 to figure out the capital loss for JDU and a capital gain for BMO.