Mr. Chair, for the government to implement in January tax changes that are legislated in July is worse than changing the rules in the middle of the game. It is actually like changing the rules in the middle of the game and then applying those new changed rules back to the beginning of the game. You can imagine a hockey game where, halfway through the second period the ref comes on the ice and says, “Oh, the rules have all changed, but we're just going to have to freeze the game for a moment and watch the first period and a half to apply those rules backwards to all the plays that have already happened.” That's what they're doing here.
Families that have arranged their businesses according to the rules as they are written in law today are then going to have to go backwards to the beginning of the year and apply these highly complicated rules that two top justices of the Tax Court say are going to be the subject of a “battle”—and I quote—in the courts. We're going to take this cobweb of complicated rules and apply it to people retroactively.
The least we can do is just move it forward to next year, let people adapt, and hopefully mitigate the damage that it will cause to the family business.