I can tell you in more general terms.
If you look at the taxation trends within Anglo-Saxon countries, which tend to be the United States, Canada, the U.K., and to some extent Australia, we've gone down a similar path. If you look at the Scandinavian countries and parts of Europe, they've gone down a different path. They've made different choices both economically and socially. I think they're winners in some respects, and perhaps we're winners in some cases. But ultimately, whether it's this government or any government, it has to look at it in terms of what the reasonable objectives are that they're trying to achieve and whether they're achievable using the tax system that they have.
I was struck by a couple of things in terms of how it's always getting into a level of detail we probably don't want to get into in talking about tax incidence, tax levels, and so forth. In terms of the tax incidence in Canada, we know taxes are now mostly proportional to income. You talk about things being progressive. The only tax really left that is progressive is income tax, and that represents about 30% of total revenue, I think. It's declining. We also know that at the top end of that, it's becoming regressive. That's pretty well documented with research.
So if the current government or any government wants to continue in that direction, it seems to me they have to somehow show that Canadians are going to benefit from it. I don't really think that has been shown, by studies for sure, and by other countries. Those are the kinds of challenges we're facing.
In terms of these kinds of initiatives, there's a fair amount of evidence. The example that would be closer to our political tradition is the U.K., where the Blair government certainly kept fairly conservative fiscal policies. On the other hand, they came up with some very strong measures on poverty and developed an anti-poverty strategy that we've been talking about several times today. They laid out all the ingredients of such a strategy, and they have been relatively successful.