Thank you, Chair.
Thanks to all the witnesses for being here today.
I'd like to begin my questioning with the Edmonton chamber. I really love these quotes in your third section on the simplification of the tax statutes. Two of them were extracted from two cases.
We were in Moncton a couple of weeks ago. One of the witnesses brought in the tax code. It was thicker than the Toronto phone book.
You know, no one here is calling for a Herman Cain kind of proposal, for that kind of simplification of our tax code, but you were right earlier when you indicated that there hasn't been a comprehensive review of our tax system since the Carter commission in 1972.
Having said all of that, there are some in Parliament who are calling for higher taxes and greater spending. I'd like your comments on that. There seems to be a misnomer that corporations are the Bay and King bank towers downtown and all the corporate heavies that hang out there. But most corporations in this country are small businesses, and I suspect that most of them in Edmonton would be members of your chamber.
Can you tell us what your members are saying about the importance of keeping corporate taxes low, on the one hand, and on the other hand returning to balanced budgets? The alternative is to go down the route of some of the European countries.
Can you talk a bit about what your members are saying?