Thank you, Mr. Chairperson.
Thank you, Mr. Brown et Monsieur Larin.
I would like to come at this from a different point of view. I think what our study should be about at this committee is the question of tax fairness and whether or not corporations are paying their fair share. I think based on the statistics, we have a clear problem of corporations managing to find more and more tax loopholes, tax avoidance schemes to offshore tax havens, to avoid paying Canadians or the Canadian government a rightful share of revenue.
We've seen revenue from corporate income tax drop as a significant percentage of total revenue from 15% to 11% in the last number of years. At the same time, we've seen that Canada's average corporate tax rate is much better than the United States. We have a KPMG study showing that Canada is the cheapest G7 country in which to do business. We have studies showing this huge rise in corporate profits and we have obviously a record now of Liberal and Conservative governments who have cut corporate taxes, have made life easier for corporations, have allowed them to do more tax avoidance, but have provided little benefit for our economy, for example. We've seen no commensurate increase in investment in this country, no increase in jobs, no trickle-down effect.
My question to Mr. Brown is, on what basis can you say that Canada is so hard done by in terms of the corporate sector when internationally speaking we fare very well and give corporations a very easy ride; and secondly, why are we not seeing any benefits when we do cut taxes and we do make life easier?