I think the starting point is that our personal income tax system is, in theory, a self-administered system, but probably two-thirds or more of us now pay somebody else to do our taxes for us. That's a sign that maybe we've gone a step too far in terms of building the complexity of our system. It's the same thing on the business side. Most estimates would say that businesses spend between 1% and 2% of their operating expenses simply in complying with the tax system. That's a good starting point. There's a lot of personal time and revenue, and business time and revenue, that's being expended to comply with a very complex tax system.
We know from Finance Canada that we have $100 billion in revenue leakage, some of which is on things we would all value, such as the RRSP, for example. Maybe it's time to step back and think about how we can have a tax system that actually boosts the productivity and performance of our economy rather than one that just captures revenue and then selectively provides incentives to different interest groups.