I would share Andrew's view. Unfortunately, delay often has its cost to taxpayers. Most of the taxpayers we would act for who are waiting on comfort letters and the adoption thereof are waiting patiently.
I referred earlier this morning to clause 274. Let me share with you the example of a real person.
A high-tech whiz, an American, comes to Canada and creates several hundred jobs. Three years later, he sells 40% of the company.
By the way, many of the Canadian employees were given shares and made lots of money.
He goes back to the States and files his taxes. A year later, his auditors check and say, “You came to Canada with common shares, but you left with class A common shares. You have a tax problem.”
May I say that I didn't act for the gentleman at the time. This was 2006. Somebody gave him my name, and since 2006...sorry, 2007, I've been trying to expedite clause 274.
He goes back to the United States with considerable capital, but is forced to put almost every single dollar he has in a trust fund to support a letter of credit for his Canadian tax obligation—a Canadian tax obligation that's going to be wiped out by this.
He's a serial entrepreneur. He wants to go into new businesses. He has a new business. He would have wanted to maintain a significant equity position in this company, but he has been diluted on two occasions because he doesn't have any money.
Although we generally say that a comfort letter is a bar of gold, and that it will eventually have been adopted, he even asked me to see if he could find someone to whom he could assign his rights, who would take over his position, and he would give them 15% of the money that was coming back to him. He just needed access to his money.
Fortunately for him, and maybe for me, Bill C-48 was presented, and now he's eagerly—patiently, but eagerly—awaiting its adoption.