Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
To begin with, I want to apologize. Today's events were such that I had to grant interviews. As a result, I missed a number of presentations. I did, however, have an opportunity to review the written material. I want to thank all the participants for their help with our budget options. I also want to say how pleased I was to hear Mr. Barr's presentation. I caught a good part of it. I believe it is critical, for a country as rich as Canada, not to lose sight of the need to do its fair share. You spoke eloquently, and I think your comments should receive special attention from the government and all members of this Committee.
Mr. Chairman, I'm going to take the liberty of addressing my first question to Margaret Lefebvre, who is here today to talk about a subject of great concern to many investors. It is a complicated matter. Indeed, we in the NDP have never been in favour of income trusts, but I can assure you that we would never have lied to the people who invested in these trusts. The current government had stated very clearly that it would leave well enough alone, but it tricked us.
In her brief and in the part of the presentation I heard, Ms. Lefebvre made it very clear that not only were there two rates and people were misled by the Conservative government, but in addition to that, they were highly technical problems.
Ms. Lefebvre, I do not want to involve you directly in the work of this Committee, but I want you to know that next week—and this is quite exceptional—we will be meeting with the person who has been designated by the current government, without any prior consultation, to replace David Dodge at the head of the Bank of Canada. I refer to Mark Carney.
Mr. Carney played a critical role in this whole issue of income trusts, and the same applies to Mr. Dodge. My question is this: one of the reasons given was the loss of tax revenues. However, in light of what happened following the nice little Halloween surprise that Mr. Flaherty sprang on you last year, would you say that the reasons given at the time were correct or, instead, that certain things that have come to light since demonstrate that control of these income trusts has now moved to the United States, in particular, and that Canada is receiving even fewer tax revenues now?