Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, witnesses.
Really the only issue here is tax leakage.
Professor Fortin, you've taken a rather hard look at whether in fact there is a tax leakage.
The allegation by the minister on Tuesday was that there was going to be a $500-million leakage, which is a curious juxtaposition to something in the order of about a $25-billion to $30-billion meltdown. This is an even a more curious juxtaposition to a $5-billion revenue reduction by GST. So you have a half billion versus five billion dollars, in terms of policy choices. One might say that's a curious set of policy choices.
The presumption is that trusts distort the market, that people make choices based upon the tax treatment.
The question I put it to you is that the trust entity is simply a download of tax liability from the corporation to the individual. If in fact we could eliminate the flow-through entities from the calculation, would the government generate more or less revenue from trusts, by virtue of downloading onto the person, as opposed to the taxation liability on the corporation, where a person generally pays a greater effective rate than does a corporation?
I'm asking you, is that a warranted presumption? If so, then the problem is with flow-through entities, rather than with the trusts themselves. Is that a reasonable question?