Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'd ask you to look upon this motion as the basis of discussion and as something to which we are certainly open to amendments with regard to issues such as the precise timing of this and how many hours are to be devoted to it.
The general point is that we would like to have hearings with expert witnesses on the income trust issue very soon. That is our primary point and the reason we called this meeting. The reason is that good public policy has to be based on good information, and on certain critical issues there is disagreement between the opinions asserted by the Department of Finance and the opinions of outside experts. I believe, in the interests of accountability and of basing policy on good information, it is incumbent upon us to get those experts around the same table and to hear their competing versions of the truth to allow us to determine, much better than we can today, where the truth lies.
Without limiting the subjects on which we might call witnesses, I'll give you three examples of them. One is the crucial question of what's called the tax leakage, or the tax revenue implications of this bill. The Department of Finance claims that this represents $500 million per year. Other reputable people claim that it would be far less than that, even nothing at all. We want to know what the truth is, and the only way to get to the truth, given that the finance officials are not speaking in public, is to get them around the same table and hear the competing views, and subject them to questioning.
The second subject is the transition period. Is four years appropriate, or should it be some other number? I'd think we'd need to get views on that and determine the costs and benefits of alternative periods for transition.
Third, there have been a number of sectors, including energy trusts, that think it is appropriate that they be exempt. I've heard arguments for and arguments against. Again, it's competing information, and we, as a committee, ought to take it upon ourselves, whether or not we agree with the bill, to get to the bottom of this and to seek out the truth.
There may be other issues that other members of the committee would want to hear witnesses on, but those are examples of issues about which I believe it is important for us to get to the truth through these witnesses.
Finally, Mr. Chair, I'd like to address two possible objections to this, briefly. Then I'll cede the floor.
The first is this idea that our so-called expert outside witnesses are simply in the employ of interested parties. That is not true. Some may be, but I'll give you the names of three people who are independent and expert: Mr. Gordon Tait from BMO, PricewaterhouseCoopers, a well-respected accounting firm, and Mr. Yves Fortin, a former public servant in the Department of Finance. These are credible outside witnesses we would all benefit from hearing--or at least doing so would not do us any harm.
The second point I would like to address is whether we are prolonging the uncertainty. I would point out two reasons for why I don't think we are. First of all, there is uncertainty regarding the facts, so by calling these witnesses we are getting to the bottom of that form of uncertainty in trying to find out where the truth lies. Second, in terms of timing, the reason we're doing this now is that we don't know when the finance minister plans to bring the bill to this committee. If he were to bring the bill to the committee in the first week of Parliament, then we'd have witnesses anyway, and we could subsume our proposed process with the government process. But for all we know, the bill could even be subsumed with the budget bill, and it wouldn't be here for some months, in which case that would be an undue delay.
Look upon this as an insurance policy. One way or another, we want to get witnesses before this committee. If the government were to act expeditiously in bringing its bill to this committee, that would solve the problem, but we don't know what the government's intentions are on this matter.
To conclude, in the interest of being accountable to Canadians, we think it's incumbent on parliamentarians to base their public policy on the best possible information. We don't think we have the best possible information, but we think that process could be assisted by bringing experts before us. We're open to the details on precise timing and the precise number of hours devoted to this exercise, but we're very adamant that we want these witnesses to appear before us in the near future.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.