Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
As you said, my name is Aaron Wudrick. I'm the federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. We're very pleased to appear this evening to comment on Bill C-29, which, of course, contains various provisions to implement aspects of the 2016 federal budget.
At 244 pages, it's a rather voluminous bill. Rather than even attempting a micro-level analysis of it, I just want to touch on a few measures in particular that the CTF takes a view on, specifically the indexation of the child care benefits and anti-tax avoidance measures, and I have a comment on the government's overall attempts to simplify what is a very complex tax code.
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation supports the government's modification of the UCCB into the new means-tested Canada child benefit. Our only concern about this measure is the total cost of it, specifically that it was presented during the election campaign as part of a package of measures that were supposed to pay for themselves, but ultimately, it ended up costing more than advertised. In this sense, I'd actually suggest it's a miniature version of the government's overall fiscal situation.
That said, we do support indexation generally. I note that the Taxpayers Federation was one of the vocal groups that advocated for the elimination of bracket creep for income taxes, whereby individuals were pushed into higher income tax brackets just because of inflation. Paul Martin, when he was finance minister, implemented this in the 2000 federal budget.
While that measure was designed to protect taxpayers from higher tax brackets, the CCB indexation, by contrast, because it is an entitlement, will lock in a higher expenditure level. We think that this is ill-advised, given that the government is already spending more on this measure than it had planned to.
With respect to the anti-tax avoidance provisions, the Taxpayers Federation applauds these measures to clarify the law. We strongly oppose tax evasion and believe that those who break the law should face the full force of the law. But we should also be absolutely clear about the potential effect of eliminating so-called grey areas, these loopholes that have effectively functioned as safety valves to lower the overall tax burden, since the practical effect of eliminating those loopholes is to raise the overall effective tax burden. We should be honest about the potential impact there. I know that not everyone on this panel might agree, but we would argue that raising taxes is not a good way to boost economic growth, which, of course, we know is one of this government's central objectives.
The last thing I want to touch on is the simplification of the tax code. I think it's safe to say that concern about the excessive complexity of our tax code cuts across the political spectrum. As of this year's tax filing date, the Income Tax Act was over one million words long and would take the average person 59 hours non-stop to read. To give you an idea of how long this is, Leo Tolstoy's epic war novel War and Peace is only 587,000 words. By contrast, the Income Tax Act is about twice as long as War and Peace. I really think we need to look at ways of making the tax code simpler. We can always debate what the right level of taxation should be. Of course, our group will always be there arguing that lower is better, but whatever we settle on, I think we should be looking to try to find simpler, more effective ways to raise the same amount of revenue.
I'll leave it at that. Thank you.