Mr. Kelly, I'm also a Quebec taxpayer, and filing two tax returns is complicated. When it comes to knowing how many people—both in Quebec and in the rest of Canada—have professionals file their tax returns, it is a bit difficult to answer because that's a personal decision, unless there is a national survey on the topic.
I wonder a great deal about a particular problem. You are talking about taxpayers' money. We argued that both levels of government would save money. Earlier, someone talked about a cost of $1 billion to merge federal and provincial tax returns. We are talking about annual savings of $425 million. Over a 10-year period, those savings would accumulate to several billion dollars. So the cost of that merger would be paid off quickly.
Where savings for taxpayers are concerned, people often look at the short term, but, on the contrary, the long term should be considered instead. I have often been told that a politician thinks of the next election, while a statesman thinks of the next generation. I think that's important.
It is said that, if the provincial government was to manage federal taxes, and a single tax return was used only in Quebec, jobs would be lost, but let's imagine the opposite. If the provincial and federal income tax returns were merged and we went back to the system we had in the 1950s, when the federal government managed Quebec's taxes, 12,000 jobs would be lost in the Government of Quebec. In the situation we are considering, it's a matter of 2,000 or 3,000 jobs.
In either case, as a unionist, I cannot say I am in favour of job losses. What I am saying is that we must consider the Quebec experience. When two departments were merged in Quebec, no job losses occurred. Trying to prove to me that job losses did occur or tell me that jobs will be lost when no studies have really been conducted on the issue is guess work.