Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I also thank all of the witnesses for having enlightened us on this topic and having provided us with more information. Although the information provided by witnesses is sometimes contradictory, I expect that their research was well done. It will be up to us to sort it all out.
May I remind you that during the last election campaign, the current Prime Minister made a rather unusual statement. In his opinion, many people were creating small and medium businesses in order to avoid paying their fair share of tax. We could say that the Prime Minister was speaking from experience, since that is something he did himself on several occasions. Indeed, he created four numbered companies in order to reduce his income tax rate. His comment poisoned the atmosphere to some degree. Still today, many SME owners consider that this does not correspond to their reality.
The Liberals had also promised to reduce the income tax rate for small and medium businesses from 11% to 9%. This was not done, however. In the 2015 Liberal platform, no mention was made about targeting small and medium businesses in particular. However, the Liberals said that they wanted to eliminate the tax loophole that benefits CEOs and allows them to save about $800 million, money we lose which could allow us to improve social programs or our infrastructures.
Mr. Dias, earlier you said that you were in favour of reducing tax unfairness between salaried workers and small businesses that can choose to incorporate. However, you also said that we could do more than that.
In your opinion, does doing more mean that we should target the tax loopholes that benefit CEOs, as well as the proliferation of agreements with tax havens?