As I said, I think there are a lot of things that would help move this country in the direction of a more competitive economy. If I had to pick, my bias would be towards cutting taxes. What is my reason? Just look at the impact. It comes back to the question that Mr. St-Cyr raised: what is it that's going to create more revenue for governments?
I think it's instructive to look at what's happened to corporate taxes and corporate tax revenue over the last five years. As the corporate income tax rate has come down significantly, nonetheless corporate income taxes made up 14.3% of the total federal revenue last year. That's the highest they've ever been except in one year out of the past 20. The average corporate income tax revenues, as a share of the total tax take for the federal government, has been two percentage points higher in the last five years than it was in the best five years of the eighties. So we're seeing some clear proof there that further action on the corporate tax front is going to pay off. It's going to pay off remarkably quickly with the kind of revenues that the government needs to do other things as well.
The other item I might just focus on is the tax treatment of dividends. I know there's some concern out there about the income trust question, and whether companies are being pushed, for tax reasons, to convert from a business form or a corporate form of an organization to an income trust form. The previous government introduced one important reform by increasing the dividend tax credit. That was fine for taxable investors. The fact is that millions of Canadians who save for retirement through their pension funds and through their RRSPs are basically being double-taxed on their dividends, as things stand now, because the dividend tax credit is not refundable to pension plans and RRSPs.
I think if you wanted to do something really useful to encourage people to invest, in other words to do something for individuals that also would help the country's companies, focus on how to grow their businesses rather than on how to structure them for tax purposes. I think that would be useful on both fronts.