Thank you.
I tried to clear up that misleading headline after the hearing in front of the Senate. I did issue a press release, and I'll just very quickly read the critical line:
We've looked at it from the point of view of the efficiency of capital markets. The work we have done in terms of capital markets per se is that probably, on balance, income trusts make markets somewhat more complete and hence somewhat more efficient, but that has nothing to do with the tax treatment and that it is appropriate that businesses face a level playing field in choosing the form of corporate organization that allows capital to be allocated to its most efficient use.
I have repeated that today.
Going beyond that, we're not in the tax game, as you will well imagine, but we do look at capital markets, and what has happened since the October 31 announcement is that we've seen something like a $20-billion or $25-billion reduction in the market value of these trusts. It has not been even, of course, across all trusts.
So what does that represent? Well, it represents two things. It can only represent two things: number one, the present value of all the future taxes that the government would have lost; and number two, the inefficiencies that were there by organizing some businesses in the form of trusts that should have been organized in the form of corporate businesses.
I can't separate between the two, but I do have faith, reasonable faith, that market evaluation of what has gone on is right and a big chunk of that $20 billion or $25 billion has to be the present value of tax losses to governments, federal and provincial.