Thank you for the question, which is an important one. The Department of Finance has devoted a lot of thought to this. I'll start by reiterating what we discussed earlier: Our government does believe in tax fairness, and we think that in Canada everyone needs to pay their fair share.
When it comes to the specific principle and the specific question around the COVID recovery dividend and which sectors it should be levied on, we were careful and disciplined in that thought process. It's very important, from our perspective, that for a windfall tax like that there be a clear logical intellectual justification, an intellectual justification and a fact-based justification.
When it comes to the COVID recovery dividend, the justification was as follows. When COVID hit Canada, when we shut down our country's economy as a result, the government undertook emergency economic action. We basically put a floor under the whole Canadian economy, and all Canadians paid for that. There was a particular sector that benefited from that government action, a particular sector of the economy, and that was the financial sector. It would have suffered significantly had the government not acted, had we not stopped the COVID recession in its tracks.
For that reason, we believed it was economically rational and justified to put in place the COVID recovery dividend. That was our rationale. I think it is robust and it stands up. I believe very strongly in tax fairness. Part of tax fairness, from my perspective, is that we have to be really careful when it comes to tax policy to ensure there is a clear, sound justification for new taxes, particularly one-off taxes that are levied.