Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I will give an example to illustrate the amendment.
Say helicopter manufacturer Bell Helicopter makes an aircraft that it sells to a mining company for that company's operational requirements. When the mining company is not using the aircraft, it may very well turn to an air charter company to rent out the aircraft during downtime. If the air charter company rents out the aircraft for personal use for more than 10% of its total use time, Bell Helicopter—not the mining company or the air charter company—has to pay the luxury tax at the time of sale.
How do you measure that at the time of sale? It's impossible, so that's why BQ‑9 excludes “an aircraft rental service in the course of a rental business” from the tax.
When it comes to potential scammers looking to use this as a way to avoid paying the tax, I would remind the committee that the Canada Revenue Agency still has the general anti-avoidance rule. Under the rule, the agency can assess whether or not a transaction is undertaken for bona fide purposes, forcing someone who sets up a shell company to pay the tax.
The purpose of the amendment is to support the industry, as well as ensure a better application of the tax so that it does what it was meant to and does not unduly hurt the industry.