As I mentioned, the Auditor General has raised concerns about this kind of tax avoidance. The measures in this bill are to some degree responsive to the Auditor General's concerns. The reason there are concerns, of course, is that if some Canadians are able to shelter or hide some of their tax liability, then other taxpayers have to pick up the slack. We all enjoy the same services, but if only some people pay for them and others who should be helping to pay for them are avoiding that, then you put an unfair burden on those who have not arranged their affairs to avoid tax. So it's very important for fairness.
Further to that, when we can achieve tax fairness, where everybody is paying what they ought to be paying--no more and no less, of course, as the taxpayers bill of rights now says--then we can start providing tax relief for everyone. For example, in our tax fairness plan we were able to increase the age credit amount for seniors by $1,000 a year; that's an additional $1,000. We were able to introduce pension income splitting for pensioners. We were able to make a further one-half percentage reduction in the corporate tax rate.
These are things we can do for everybody once we capture all of the tax revenue that should be coming into government and that may be improperly sheltered through these kinds of devices.