Certainly it was some months ago, after we became the government, that we started to see the acceleration of conversions. That concerned me some months ago. Then, as I mentioned a moment ago, the quantity of the conversions--the amount of money involved, the size of the conversions--was accelerating as well. Then we had the conversions moving into a new sector of the Canadian economy that is capital intensive, namely the telecommunication sector, first with TELUS and then imitated by BCE. I had directors telling me that they felt compelled and were getting advice that, as directors of publicly traded companies in Canada, if they did not convert they were not serving the best interests and were violating their duty to maximize value to shareholders. That was a matter of increasing concern to me, that this was the wrong model for Canada. It was the wrong way to go. It was the wrong thing to do.
It was not in the best interests of Canada for next year or the year after that, and certainly not for the next generation. It was counterproductive in terms of our agenda to have a more competitive, productive Canadian economy, to keep our standard of living and quality of life, and to keep our social services. These massive transfers that we make to the provinces come from tax revenues to the Government of Canada, and that erosion of the tax base would have meant that, to pay for those services, the health transfers, the post-secondary education transfers, the social transfers, and infrastructure, we would have had to tax more and more individuals and their families in Canada, which I also felt was not in the best interests of our country. It was not fair.