Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Welcome, everyone. It's nice to see some familiar faces again. I wish to start with Mr. Bartlett from the Institute of Fiscal Studies and Democracy. You made a comment regarding taxes and a preference to have lower taxes, if that is correct. I think you mentioned that in your comments. I want to put on the record that when we came in we cut taxes for the middle class. If you look over a five-year horizon, it's over $20 billion in tax relief to nine million Canadians. We did institute that.
We also increased taxes on those who can afford it, the wealthiest, the 1%, and this has been applauded in a lot of quarters. Then we also cut business taxes for small businesses. If you look at that over a four-year period, it's $3 billion that will be saved by small businesses, which we know are the backbone of our economy. In the city that I have the privilege of representing, as one of three MPs, there are over 13,000 private businesses and it'll be approximately a $3-billion tax cut, which I think will be beneficial to those folks. I did want to put that on the record, and I'm not going to ask you a question directly.
I want to go to Jennifer Drever at MNP. I read your brief and I wish to say thank you for your comment when you say you “applaud the progress that the Government has made to date which clearly demonstrates that when the Government and stakeholders work together, we can achieve results that benefit everyone.”
I'm not going to go into TOSI, because the tax on splitting income will be a very interesting subject to talk about in a minute or two, and it's difficult. I do want to talk about passive investments and I would like to hear your comments on that, because I think we've landed at a place on passive investments that is equitable, that is fair, and that takes into account people's ability to save. If you want to go on maternity leave, you can save for that. If you're a doctor and you want to set aside up to $3 million or the equivalent in passive investments, $150,000 in income, all that's going to happen is that you're going to be bumped up from a 12% small business tax rate to the corporate tax rate of around 25% or 26%, which is not that bad on passive income, as opposed to active income.
Generally, the largest corporations don't pay the small business tax rate; that's to say, the wealthiest people don't pay the small business tax rate, because they're already in the higher corporate tax rate. So those entrepreneurs out there are going to keep doing what they're doing. I'm not asking for verification, but in your judgment, is that a fair assessment?