I think for today's purposes, I'll touch on two things.
The mandate of this committee is to examine all things fiscal, so let's talk a bit about tax.
As a starting point, are we taxing the right things? Economists would prefer to tax consumption rather than taxing work effort or investment, for example. We've built up a huge array of tax expenditures.
Last time, Mr. Chairman, I mentioned the over $100 billion in leakage, and then the Department of Finance put out a paper three days later confirming that there's about $100 billion of leakage. That's a lot of lost revenue that could be directed towards lower tax rates, for example, as part of the tax system.
I believe that we should be taxing carbon, for example. There's a question about whether the federal government, in addition to the three provinces—soon to be four—that are doing that, should be trying to shift the balance in our economy towards a lower-carbon economy down the road. I think there's a lot of scope to rethink the tax system in its entirety or piece by piece, but we've built it up piece by piece, so maybe this is the time to take a wide view.
I'll pick up your prompt. I do think there are things we could do to reduce barriers within the country to the interprovincial mobility of goods, capital, and ideas. The past government actually took this on. I think there's more to do. Anything we could do to ensure that we have a single Canadian market, a national federation, by reducing what are often really subtle regulatory barriers between sectors and regions would be a step ahead.
I've spent most of my 12 years at the Conference Board trying to think about what a national growth strategy would look like, and those are just two examples.