—these rules as proposed will make a family decide to sell their business to an outsider instead of passing it on to the next generation. There are no ifs, ands, or buts about that either. These rules say that if you sell to a family member, you're going to be taxed at dividend rates of 45%, but if you sell to an outsider.... That's obviously not right.
The last thing is, who you are going to sell to? Private businesses are not going to be interested in buying new private businesses or existing private businesses, because they're going to be looking to get out of the private business world with these rules. Who's going to buy? Public companies and foreign corporations are going to be buying up Canadian family businesses if these proposals go ahead as proposed.
My last comment is that I really think a collaborative effort would go a long way to resolving these issues, because there are people like me in the profession who are level-headed, understand the policy objectives, and have experience. If we sat down in a room with Finance and whoever the right people are—the economists—I think we could hammer out proposals that would be acceptable to everyone in this room and, more importantly, to Canadians.