I'm talking about the motion relating to income trusts.
The issue is reasonably simple, as I said, because the government, when it was campaigning, obviously, adopted a very solemn promise to Canadians that income trusts would not be taxed. The Minister of Finance changed his mind. He based that decision upon his assertion that there was tax leakage taking place because of the existing status of income trusts.
Now more than a year has passed--in fact almost a year and a half has now passed--since that particular assertion was made. There is a body of evidence, a body of fact, that now exists in the marketplace and in financial markets. We have some evidence now of the repercussions of that decision. I think it is time this committee had a look at whether the assertion of a tax leakage is reasonable or not. Can it be proven or not?
The gravity of the promise that was broken I think really underscores our need to have a look at whether the Minister of Finance was correct in his assumptions about the marketplace, because there is conflicting evidence. I think because the lives of so many individual Canadians were impacted, and we've seen as well a hollowing-out of the income trust sector, particularly as related to energy trusts by non-Canadian entities who are non-taxpayers, it really behooves us to look objectively, impartially, non-politically at the whole issue of whether—