Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ms. Ablonczy--terrific.
There is just one point about the Mintz committee. The 1998 report did recommend a change roughly along the lines of that proposed by the March 19 budget, absolutely. However, the report went on to say you would only do this in the context of fairly generous grandfathering rules and a carefully considered and fairly lengthy transition mechanism, because it would be a substantive change.
I have another comment on your preamble, if I may. I think lower personal tax rates make a lot of sense for Canada. We are not seeing any shortage of revenue on the part of the provincial government, so I am fully supportive of measures that would lower corporate and personal tax rates over time as well as loosen up on regulation. My concern is that we are going to have to look to the next budget for that, I think, because there wasn't a lot of evidence of that in the past budget. So I think that is something worth getting on the table.
As to debt dumping, I referred specifically to debt-to-asset ratios. The general approach is called thin cap. This is a set of rules that several countries use. Canada uses them in some instances in a limited application. It limits the amount of debt relative to equity or relative to earnings that a corporation books in Canada. Above that threshold, interest is no longer deductible.
That certainly would get at the debt dumping we've talked about. I certainly see such a measure as consistent with the minister's aims. I would encourage the committee and the finance minister to look at these mechanisms as something that would make sense for Canada.