Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you for coming before us, Mr. Baker, and congratulations on your new nomination or posting. I think you'll do a good job.
I'm going to get straight to it. The amount that worries me the most is this $30.6 million that's funding to address the legislative and policy initiatives, arising from the 2006 federal budget and also for the GST rate reduction.
If I recall, when you appeared before us—and I think Finance officials also appeared before us—we were told that the costs were going to be minimal, at maybe $5 million or $10 million tops, in terms of storing all these gimmicks or small-time tax deduction relief, whatever you want to call it, by the current government in the last budget.
Here we are at $30.6 million; it makes no sense.
You've still got a ways to go, because you haven't adopted them in processing the tax returns for 2006. That's only going to happen now in the months of March and April. Where is this going to end?
I'm going to quote somebody in your department who testified:
...our current estimates are about $10 million to implement the GST reduction over two years. That's on a reduction of approximately $10 billion, which is the $5 billion projection of the lower tax rate for Canadians...
Where is this going to end? It's $30 million to adopt measly dollars for Monsieur et Madame Tout-le-monde. Is this an open throttle and never-ending? I don't know how to ask the question. Can you help me on this?