Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you to all of you for good presentations, not only in boiling them down to the time you had available--a very short time--but giving us additional background material, which you can be sure will be looked at and considered.
I particularly, though, want to take a minute to address the musings of my friend, “Cassandra” McCallum. To listen to him, you would think that Canada is on the brink of disaster. Sadly, sometimes politics does intrude in what should be straightforward considerations. But I can tell all of you that in fact under our government, spending on a number of programs actually increased from what it was before. In addition, we believe that by putting money back into the hands of job creators and ordinary citizens, tax revenues will actually go up. This has been demonstrated in jurisdiction after jurisdiction. We know that in the government that Mr. McCallum was part of, spending increased 15% a year and more, and yet you're still here with tremendous concerns. We want to continue to meet those concerns in meaningful ways. All of you in various ways have given high marks to our government's first efforts, and now we're going to our next budget and again we are considering the needs of all your organizations and your different sectors of the economy. You all contribute in many ways.
So I want to just ask some brief questions, starting of course with the gold medallist. The first shall be last and the last first.
You mentioned in number three of your recommendations that new fiscal policy measures, including tax measures, would remove economic barriers to participation in sports and promote activity at the community level. I'm wondering if you could be a bit more specific about the tax measures you have in mind, but very briefly please, because I do have other questions.