Good afternoon, Mr. Lewis, at Burnaby Mountain. It's a lovely part of this beautiful country that we live in.
Mr. Lewis, we know that a tax system is designed to raise revenue to pay for services that Canadians need, be it their health care, education for their kids, roads, running various government departments, old age security and so forth.
We also know we want to design a tax system with few inefficiencies, with as much neutrality as possible, with this concept called integration and in which we avoid such practices as surplus stripping for tax avoidance strategies that some corporations and individuals can currently take advantage of to lower their tax bills, which I don't think is efficient or fair. We want a tax system that does not result in, as you point out, extreme wealth inequality. That's something we need to look at.
We have a progressive tax system, but we also have a tax system right now where there's a differential in the tax rates between dividends, interest and capital gains. We have moved to put more integration in the tax system.
I'm going back to your comments on health care because I truly believe our doctors and professionals should not really be depending on our tax system to create wealth for themselves. They should be depending on their salaries. They should be compensated fairly for that.
There was the debate on passive and active income, and there is now the debate on capital gains. At the provincial level, we need to understand that our doctors need to be paid more. I think in the province of British Columbia they are going down that route. The compensation system needs to change because we shouldn't even be having that argument or conversation about how we pay our doctors. We need to pay them well. They're very important, but they should not have to depend on generating capital gains within their corporation for their livelihood.
Would you not agree with that, sir?