It is certainly an inequity. I think many of them would like to avail themselves of that type of program.
The other thing is the capital gains situation that occurs with the sale of a small business or the property. I'd like to see some effort to consolidate some of these. One block could have ten owners with 15 feet of store. What are you going to do with that? Some of them are on extremely good public transit areas. They need to be built up, but we don't need a store under every condo. I don't see anyone looking at the problem. I don't see the cities looking at it, or the province, at this time.
Another thing I've been told—which I am not convinced is a serious problem—is that a lot of merchants in the day-to-day ringing of the till have a lot of problems with the GST. People are always trying to barter it away. It causes slippage, we could say. The GST in other countries is often hidden within the price, and it would be a less onerous procedure if it was hidden. We've gone through a lot of changes with the GST. I don't want to see any more myself, truthfully. It's working somewhat.
I can't think of a whole lot of federal things for our situation, except to acknowledge that all across the country this old style of retail is crumbling away and it could use some attention.