Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to all of you for your presentations.
I'd like to start with two very quick comments and then ask some questions.
First of all, Mr. Seiling, I totally agree with you about the wrong-headedness of getting rid of this visitors' GST rebate. Indeed, we pushed for hearings to be held on that subject. We're going to have two hours, I believe, of hearings on that issue in a month or so, so we'll come back to that.
I'd also like to congratulate the Greater Kitchener Waterloo Chamber of Commerce, not only for your point that reductions in income tax are superior to consumption taxes and your proposal to get the lowest income tax rate down to 15%, where it was in 2005 before it was raised--we agree with that--but also in particular because you're speaking out about this myriad of piecemeal tax credits. I agree that it not only complicates the tax system but is also almost a kind of social engineering, government knows best attitude when you give special money for soccer players but not for dancers. We agree with you totally in the primacy of broad-based tax relief.
Turning now to questions, to the SickKids hospital, I'll say that I totally agree with you about the importance of health research. We've been hearing a number of people across the country on this issue, and I've heard it said that the situation in health research is urgent, if not desperate, in the sense that funding that has been given in the past to health researchers is coming to an end soon because the government has not yet stepped up to the plate. And many of the people who have come to this country from the U.S. and elsewhere will be forced to return unless new money is forthcoming, so we'll have a brain drain instead of the brain gain that had been induced by past research.
That's what we've heard. Has that been your experience too?