I had a chance to meet with Garth Whyte from the CFIB last night. In fact, we were talking about this very issue. Usually they start with easing the regulatory burden, and I think that's very consistent with our own view as well. Any progress we can make to have better alignment between federal regulation, provincial regulation, and alignment across provinces would be a huge net gain for small business.
Secondly, continue to reduce the tax burden, and that doesn't necessarily mean cutting tax rates. That might be making our tax system more efficient.
I'm completing, right now, a fairly major study on broad reform to the tax system, and I'm really struck, for example, by the lack of harmonization between provincial sales taxes and the GST. I'll set all the politics on the GST rate aside, but the truth of the matter is that you'd be hard-pressed to find a credible economist to come in and talk about the GST not being a good form of taxation. It is stable through the business cycle and it rebates the input costs to business. And in fact what we really need, I would argue, is harmonization of provincial sales taxes with the federal system to create a national sales tax system, knowing full well that Alberta doesn't have sales tax, but also knowing that Atlantic Canada has already harmonized.