Mr. Wallace's points are superficially reasonable, but I don't think they are in fact. The first point is partly my fault, because I was the one who first raised this apparent confusion between deduction and tax credit. Subsequently Monsieur Laforest showed me correspondence with the legal people, and I came to understand that there was not a mistake in the drafting. The word “deduction” meant deducting a certain amount, such as $3,000, from the tax you pay; it was not a tax deduction that you deduct from your income. When I saw the correspondence and reread the bill, that became clear, so I don't think there is a drafting problem.
On the second point, in terms of my amendment, it is obvious that this will reduce the cost substantially, because the effect will be to exclude all metropolitan regions with populations in excess of 200,000, so there would be a substantial reduction in the cost. That is obvious from the beginning, and we don't need the PBO to tell us that. He could perhaps tell us the amount of the reduction, but I don't know if we need to know that precisely; we know it would be a substantial reduction in the cost.
Professor Finnie is also a fine fellow, but I'm not sure we need his testimony in order to proceed.