Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I appreciate all of your presentations. We find this consultation very helpful.
What I personally don't find helpful is Mr. McCallum's penchant for using his questioning time to fight political battles he's already lost, particularly on the GST. It passed, and it passed because Canadians voted for it. Canadians knew this government was going to do it. And guess what? We keep our commitments. That is the way it is. I'm sorry Mr. McCallum lost that battle, but I don't think it's very helpful for him to try to keep fighting it on your backs. I apologize on your behalf for that having had to happen.
I want to move to some of the issues on the GST, particularly with the Council for International Co-operation, and ending child poverty. You may know that the Make Poverty History study of 2004 showed that low-income Canadians actually pay a disproportionate amount of tax because of the GST. In fact, the study showed that one of the best ways to help low-income Canadians would be to reduce the GST, because proportionately that hurts them the most. In fact, my friends in the NDP made that very policy issue a plank in their 1997 platform—to reduce the GST—so that it would assist low-income Canadians. I wonder whether you would comment on that study and on whether you have plans to do a further study to see what positive impact on low-income Canadians the reduction in GST will have in future.