Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thanks to the committee for inviting me to speak with you today and actually, more generally, for conducting a comprehensive study of tax issues in Canada. I think it's a good moment for this in Canada. It's necessary to do these things on a regular basis.

Finance committee  I don't think this is a matter of principle; I think it becomes a matter of practical politics. Carbon taxes are good. To get them in place, whatever it takes.... If that means reducing other taxes so that the carbon taxes are revenue neutral, that's pragmatic politics. If it m

Finance committee  Yes, I think you have to. It's unfortunate to exempt the exports, but I think that unless you do that, you're just creating an incentive for industries to flee to the non-carbon tax jurisdiction over the short term. Obviously, the goal in the long term is to get more countries

Finance committee  I would say that if it had been accomplished by harmonizing with the provinces, then it would have been a decent policy trade-off.

Finance committee  It's true that the potential for protectionist uses of that carbon tax or tariff could be a problem, particularly when you're imposing a tax on the embedded carbon content—and it's often hard to trace exactly what that is. There is a precedent for this in the U.S., I think, with

Finance committee  I'm not an expert in trade law, but that's why I've mentioned this ozone-depleting substances tax that the U.S. introduced. They had a domestic tax on ozone-depleting substances and wanted to make sure their industries weren't at a competitive disadvantage to imports. That was co

Finance committee  People say that. People say Germany doesn't really produce any oil, so they've had an easier time satisfying the emission standards and they're importing from other countries that are burning coal or whatever. I think that's one of the rationales for trying to think of this as a

Finance committee  They have done a good job on wind power and a variety of other things.

Finance committee  The key is that you said “small inheritance”. That's the key, right? The key thing is that these taxes should only apply to very substantial estates that are transferred from one generation to the next. In fact, I was speaking a couple of weeks ago in connection with a debate in

Finance committee  No, I'm not.

Finance committee  I agree, and I think it can probably be revenue neutral and certainly advantageous.

Finance committee  I agree. I wrote about the fines and thought it was a terrible decision when the Supreme Court did that. But the rationale is different from that for a royalty. You're not killing anybody by....

Finance committee  Well, I guess the counter-argument sometimes--and I haven't studied this in detail--would be that it's a cost of doing business, like any other cost of doing business. So it should be treated as a deduction. I see it has these federal-provincial implications.

Finance committee  I think this is where you'd have to have presumptions about the carbon content in the import that would have to be based on rough figures from wherever the origin of the product is, and what kind of energy sources they're using, and presumptions about the energy sources that are

Finance committee  I'm not a fan of that. I remain a fan of individual taxation, however, with the following exceptions. We have these attribution rules that I actually think don't respect individual taxation. Individual taxation treats individual ownership and entitlement to property and income se