Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I think we have good news and bad news today. The good news is that at least these hearings have demonstrated their value by forcing the Department of Finance to produce numbers instead of these blacked-out, highly censored documents that we have had to date. So congratulations on that.
The bad news is that these numbers from Finance have been all over the map. There have been four sets of numbers. These are hugely complex issues. We can't respond immediately when we're presented with numbers on the spur of the moment, so it will be my proposition that after we have heard from the witnesses.... Some of these experts will question Finance. Finance now says “900 million”; some of our witnesses say “zero”. This is an important subject. We will hear the witnesses, and then after we have heard from the experts, in light of the expert testimony we will propose to invite the minister back to revisit his estimates.
But I might just say off the top of my head, looking at two charts, I can think of two good reasons why right away I'm skeptical. He puts a lot of emphasis on BCE and TELUS, and at the time he said that if BCE and TELUS had converted there would be $300 million of lost revenue. But since that time, BCE and TELUS have both revealed they will be paying essentially no corporate income tax. As one of our experts will testify, in fact by not converting to an income trust, BCE and TELUS will be paying less tax, because they will be paying essentially no corporate tax over the coming years.
With respect to the second example, his other chart here, about the foreign energy trusts and the 15% withholding tax, if those companies were corporations they'd presumably be paying the average effective corporate tax rate in the energy sector, which is approximately 7%--7% is less than 15%.
Those are just two examples, which I won't elaborate on further, as to potential flaws. We have to hear the witnesses at this point. After we have had time to digest all these numbers, we will seek to call the minister back.
This is my question for the minister. Before your announcement, did you receive studies on the impact of your announcement on investors? If so, what did those studies tell you?