I want to go to Mr. Larson and follow up on John McKay's questioning. You'll notice that he's gone through quite a metamorphosis from when he was in government. It's good to see what a few months in opposition will do.
I want to ask his question the way I've asked it many times before at this committee, which is this: don't you think we should get some cost-benefit analysis before we give another break to the corporate sector? I want to draw your attention to the fact that corporate income tax, as a share of overall government revenue, has dropped considerably over the last five years from 15% to 11%, and the money we get from personal income tax has gone from about 45% to 65%. I think it's pretty hard to justify another break for corporations at a time when, as John said, we haven't seen the benefits from giving those kinds of corporate tax breaks. Over the last little while, we've seen profits go up astronomically, and by all accounts corporations in Canada have set record-level profits, business organizations included. They have dropped their investment in Canada and they have received huge tax cuts from the government.
I don't disagree that there are some areas we might want to look at carefully in terms of research and development and protection of certain Canadian industries--maybe aerospace or astronomy--but should we do this blanket kind of thing when we don't have any evidence that it actually helps our economy and leads to greater competitiveness?