This is a tricky one for us. We certainly are supportive of the idea of tax simplification. There's no question that a plethora of new credits have been created, some of which do need to be analyzed as to whether or not they're accomplishing the public policy goals they were set out with. There is no opposition whatsoever from us with respect to tax simplification.
However, in our experience at CFIB over 45 years, most governments that embark upon large tax simplification studies and measures end up using that to delay any tax reductions, so that we spend a lot of time studying the tax code and what can be simplified and very little time studying what can be done to actually inject more of businesses' or consumers' own dollars back into their own pockets.
For tax simplification, we would prefer that it be focused on working with the Canada Revenue Agency and some good momentum in previous budgets. I will say that one of the elements of the 2016 budget that we did like is that there were some measures taken with the CRA to simplify and help better interpret tax policy for small business owners. Those are good measures, very practical measures, to help small businesses—and to help any Canadian, really—in dealing with the very complicated tax code.
I have to say that would be probably our first choice: focusing on CRA as opposed to a global review of every credit that exists.