Thank you. I appreciate that.
If I wasn't clear, Mr. Chair, I will seek to be this time.
We're talking about the automobile standby charge and whether it is retroactive or prospective in nature. Ms. Gwyer has told us that it's prospective in nature, so one of the alternatives perhaps would be an amendment to this, to make it consistent with the banking. I certainly would not, but maybe another party would like to move to make this retroactive. To make this consistent with what they're doing with respect to the HST/GST charges to banks would be to make this retroactive.
I'm wondering why in one case the government is going back 30 or 40 years to collect charges, and then in another case it is not. I would say that in either case the idea of making tax policy retroactive is a dangerous precedent to set, as it gives it to the CRA, and in fact the government of the day, to remake history, to change the laws as they were written 20 or 30 years ago and just say, “You know what? Regardless of what the court says, regardless of what the judiciary says and regardless of what the law says”—it is really almost a violation of the rule of law—“we believe it should be x, so we're changing it, and we're going back in history and changing the legislation.”
I was hoping that Ms. Gwyer, given her incredible depth of knowledge with respect to taxation, could explain to us why the automobile charge and, in general, tax changes that are tightening are prospective and not retroactive.