Thank you very much. I would like to continue on that topic. The Bloc Québécois has been calling for a moratorium on income trust conversions for a long time. While the Bloc Québécois agrees with the government on the end result, which was to tax income trusts, the Bloc Québécois does not agree at all with the means used to achieve it. First of all, promising not to tax income trusts and then doing so was outright irresponsible. Many people invested in these trusts in good faith, believing them to be an attractive investment tool. People were misled and deceived by the government.
Having said that, on the issue foregone taxes and revenues for the government, I was equally unimpressed with the demonstration here in committee. In my mind, it is an important tax issue, if only because the day after the announcements, stocks plummeted. That is the best indication that people who invested in those tools and companies that decided to structure themselves that way did so essentially for tax purposes. In my view—and in the view of my party, that was the main problem.
In your brief, you say that we should not impose a corporate model throughout Canada. I agree with you. There are different models that correspond to different organizations, but those models should be chosen based on the nature of the operations, and not based on tax considerations. That is why we are still in favour of taxing income trusts. However, as you reiterated in your brief, the proposal was for a ten-year transition period rather than a four-year one, which is somewhat short, in our view.
I would like you to repeat the figures. I heard you mention figures on Canadian ownership, on changes to Canadian ownership of trusts before and after changes made by the government. You gave them to us, but I did not have time to grasp them. I would like you to repeat them.