Thank you, Chair, and thank you to all of our witnesses.
I'd like to begin, if I could, with Mr. Howlett of Canadians for Tax Fairness.
In your presentation, you come back to a theme that's been around since the Carter Commission, which is usually expressed as “a buck is a buck is a buck”, and argue against capital gains getting a break on taxation and treating it like any other kind of income.
Then you also talked about the unfairness. You single out the stock options deduction as the most unfair loophole. Why do we have these? Has your research indicated why these discrepancies continue to exist? Is it because of reciprocity with the United States that has caused this to come into our tax law? It makes a lot of sense that you would treat all income the same, yet we don't, as you point out. Why?