Okay, but you're giving us a ballpark figure, so we have to take that into account when we assess both our pre-budget presentations and whatever Mr. Flaherty is going to talk about this afternoon. There is limited room. If you consider the fact that another drop in the GST is about $6 billion, even on that basis, just on that term, we don't have enough money, never mind income splitting, which is $5 billion or $6 billion, never mind taking into account all the other things Ellen and others mentioned. We have to be very careful about what we push for and what will actually produce productivity.
There is a real debate about whether or not another drop in corporate income tax will do that. That's an expensive proposition. The question for us is, does that produce competitiveness and productivity?
Don Drummond had some comments in the paper not too long ago questioning whether or not the business sector has done its job of translating tax breaks into real investment in this country that leads to more jobs, higher productivity, and so on.
My questions are as follows. For anyone who wants to answer, does a drop in the corporate income tax from 21% to 19% produce much in terms of productivity? Does the capital gains really do what you're talking about? Does the marginal effective tax on investments do it, or do we need to look at some other things? For example, could you say that the cancellation of the national day care program produces competitiveness? Would it not make sense to look at that in terms of increasing productivity? On some of the other stuff the government has done, does an increase in defence spending increase productivity? Does the 1% drop in GST produce competitiveness?
Ellen, maybe you could start, and then Don and then Dale. Could you give me a response?