Evidence of meeting #4 for Industry and Technology in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was investment.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Parm Bains Liberal Richmond East—Steveston, BC
Thank you.
I have two final questions. I'll ask for a short answer, if you have one, on your favourite topic of the day. How much can taxes be lowered in order for us to compete with our southern neighbours? Where does increasing competition through lower taxes bring us?
President and Chief Executive Officer, C.D. Howe Institute
I think that in many cases the corporate income tax rates we currently have are not actually yielding much revenue and, in fact, perhaps are high enough that they're actually costing both federal and provincial treasuries revenue. I think you could actually lower some of those rates without having any impact on a budget of a kind that you'd have to offset with higher taxes elsewhere or with spending cuts.
Here's what I would like to see us do, and I know you asked for a short answer. There are better models of taxation than the one we currently have. My former colleague and friend Jack Mintz has some very important ideas about going to more cash-flow-based taxes and maybe exempting reinvested profits from taxation.
In order to get there, though, that takes time. That's one of the reasons I've continually mentioned an investment tax credit, because that's something you can do temporarily, and that gives us the time we would need in order to prepare ourselves for a more thoroughgoing reform.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ben Carr
Thank you very much, Mr. Bains.
Mr. Robson, that brings us to the end of our time together today. You are the first witness we have had on this productivity study, so we very much appreciate your ability to get things in order quickly and to share your insights with us. Thank you very much.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ben Carr
Take good care.
Colleagues, I have a couple of quick things. Just as a reminder, we are not meeting on Monday, because the House is not sitting on Monday as a result of the fact that Tuesday is the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Our next meeting, therefore, is Wednesday, October 1. This will be our first meeting on the defence industrial strategy study.
The clerk is going to do her best to try to alternate us, Mondays on productivity and Wednesday on defence, just so there is consistency built in. However, we need your help, and I'm going to start to apply a bit more pressure. We need witness lists. We need those sent in to the clerk, and we need them in soon. They must have contact information.
Two things will happen if you don't provide witness lists. One, either we can't hold the meeting, or two, I'm just going to go find the witnesses, and whether members of the committee like it or not, those are the witnesses who are going to appear because we have to keep going. I don't think it's going to come to that, but I do need everybody to please elevate this on their list of priorities. We have a nice gap between now and the first day of our study. We ought to be able to come up with some witnesses in the first few weeks.
Colleagues, thank you very much. We're doing an excellent job of keeping ourselves pretty much right on time, particularly given a transition.
Thank you, as always, to our interpreters for your good work today.
Thank you very much to our analysts, our clerk, our support staff and everybody else who is here.
I hope colleagues have a great rest of the week, and we will see you again in seven days' time.
The meeting is adjourned.