Thank you for that question. It's a good one. It's a good illustration of a point that Shawn was making earlier, that these are hard lines to draw and have to be done with careful thought, being mindful of real business transactions and what really happens when a business is transferred. It's finding the right balance.
As Mr. Wark said in his comments, it would be a somewhat extreme rule that said that when you have a transfer, you have to shutter the doors and the parent is not allowed in the building anymore, as of the date of transfer. That, of course, goes pretty far.
At the same time, you have at the other end of the extreme some provisions, such as the ones we've been discussing today, that have no requirement that the parent cease or restrict in any way their involvement in the business and, in fact, have no requirement that the child have any involvement in the business or that there be any sort of transfer between the two.
Part of the hard work that we're thinking about, consistent with the Minister of Finance's mandate letter, is the balancing of these kinds of practical considerations, so that you can have a real intergenerational transfer that reflects what actually goes on.
It is a fair point that in many cases it's not a hard break, such that at the date of transfer the keys are given, as when you buy a house, and the parent is no longer involved at all and the child completely takes over. It makes sense for there to be some overlap, and that is something that I think a set of rules would need to think about.
On the other extreme, however, it seems that when you have an intergenerational transfer of a business, some diminution in the role of the parent, coupled with the child's actually taking over the business, is an integral part of it. That really is a lot of the difficulty in coming up with a nuanced and complete set of rules to deal with it.