What's particularly valuable about a tax credit program is that it doesn't discriminate between urban or rural. It's a uniform program. Whoever wants or needs to access it, providing they can meet the rehabilitation expense criteria and it's certified, no matter where in the country that is, it would be available for them. There's no discrimination here, which I think is a very valuable aspect of it.
I want to touch for a moment on your point, and it was raised earlier, about a tax credit potentially being of more interest to the so-called rich.
The fact of the matter is that a tax credit is more beneficial to lower-income people than it is to the rich, because the tax credit is calculated at a percentage of the expenditures. Therefore, if you're in a lower tax bracket, that tax credit is worth more to you than it is to the rich, because it's dollar for dollar. If the so-called rich are paying at a top marginal rate of 53.5% in Ontario, or a little less in Quebec, that impact is not as much as it is for somebody who might be, let's assume for the moment, at the 20% marginal rate. If it's a 20% tax credit based on expenditures, it could potentially wipe out their tax liability. It's actually worth more there, so I don't see any basis for arguing that this would be a mechanism that is of greater benefit to the wealthy.
On one other point you made—and if I suggested it, I didn't mean to—is there is no more complexity in a tax credit than there is an a grant type of program. When I referred to complexity, I was referring more to the proliferation of tax credits for various activities that complicate the Income Tax Act. When I first started out in tax policy as a young man with pitch-black hair, the Income Tax Act was maybe half an inch thick. Thank god for iPhones and computers today, because when I go to meetings out of town, I can't take the Income Tax Act with me. It's literally that thick, with all the regulations. It's that thick because of the proliferation of different mechanisms added into the act.
As I said earlier, once something is there, it's oftentimes very difficult to take it away, because there is now a constituency that relies on it, and they argue very strongly that it should not be taken away. That was the context I was talking about in terms of complexity.