Finance committee  Absolutely, that would be very helpful, plus a little more flexibility around the remittance schedules that are in place. As well, one of the big issues right now is that it's always based on estimates rather than on actuals, and that can have a big impact on people's cashflow.

Finance committee  I'll try. As for interviews with business owners, I'm not 100% sure that option is available, though I'm sure it is. But when it comes to waiting times on telephones, it has actually improved quite a bit. There is a business window, a direct line that CRA has for businesses, which allows them to actually get somebody on the phone fairly quickly.

Finance committee  Yes, and I just want to comment on that, because I think we have found as an organization that our relationship with CRA has vastly improved over the last five years as well, since they became an agency. Just the GST piece that we did a few weeks back was a real testament to that.

Industry committee  We would agree with what Jayson had to say. But another element of this, of course, is the tax situation we have on fuel in Canada. Proportionally, Canada's fuel prices have twice as much tax in them as those in the United States, when you combine the federal and the provincial components in the fuel prices we have here.

Industry committee  Sure. Thanks, Garth. To illustrate a little of the impacts of energy pricing on small and medium-sized firms and the manufacturing sector, I wanted to show you a survey that CFIB did last fall, following Hurricane Katrina, when the fuel prices suddenly spiked to a certain degree.