Sure. Probably the domain where I've had the most experience working from a partnership perspective would be in the tax policy area. In order to move issues forward in that domain, you often work with a diverse group of participants. I'll give you three examples.
First off, I'll start at the international level. Obviously, on the issue of international taxation, it's critical that we work with other partners around the world to develop tax systems that fit together nicely—tax treaties, what have you—and that we find a way to make the tax system globally, all the individual pieces of it, fit together well.
I actually chaired an OECD committee on taxation when I was there, so I've had some experience in trying to bring together the different perspectives—countries bring very different perspectives to the issue of taxation—into some sort of cohesive unit.
The second thing I would note is that with the provinces and the territories, in the area of taxation, and perhaps even more so in the area of the environment, it's important to be able to work together with our provincial counterparts to try to achieve the objectives that we are both trying to achieve.
For example, last week I was out in Lake Louise with the minister for the meeting of the federal and provincial environment ministers. We were able to announce actions on air quality in Canada. That was the culmination of a lot of work, most of which I wasn't involved with, on the federal and provincial fronts to try to come up with common areas where we can work together to improve air quality in Canada.
I know that working with the provinces is a very important part of what I'll need to do in this job. In the taxation domain, again, whether it was actual federal-provincial committees on taxation, it was important to try to pull that together. We couldn't always agree on everything, on what we wanted to do federally versus different provinces, but again, it was trying to have the dialogue and making sure that we understood the issues as we were developing our policies and achieving as much common ground as we could.
Finally, obviously it's important to work with individual Canadians or groups in the taxation area. I've had a number of experiences on that. On things like the registered disability savings plan, it was really important to work with a diverse group of people to try to figure out how we could devise a tax program that would actually help parents save for their disabled children. It was seen to be very positive. As well, with the working income tax benefit, we tried to provide help for people who are on the cusp of working and getting back to work, to try to make sure that the tax system is working as well as we can make it work there. It's very important for our work with the provinces to be integrated in that respect.
Those are a few experiences that I hope will help me in this world in which I know I'm going to have a number of partners to work with on various issues that are going to come at us.