I know my time is short.
As an economist and someone who did his degree at Simon Fraser, before going to U of T, I concur with your thoughts. Our goal is to raise the standard of living for all Canadians, create wealth and create jobs, but also not create wealth inequality while we're doing that. That's the last thing we should be doing.
The capital gains effective tax rate is at 25% right now. Literally, people selling stock or a piece of land that they've owned for a long time do very well, especially when the government has put in infrastructure around that land. Think about this. The taxpayers fund all the infrastructure around a piece of land. The person who has owned the land for many years now benefits, because the value of the land has increased exponentially, while the cost of making that value increase was borne by the taxpayers of Canada or by a region.
We have many instances of that in the GTA. The person then sells the land and benefits handsomely. There's nothing wrong with that individual paying and providing a little bit more, so we can provide such programs as the Canadian dental care plan, the Canada child benefit and an early learning and national day care plan.
I look forward to having that debate in the weeks and months ahead.
Thank you.