To set aside carbon pricing for one moment, the chamber has long advocated, and will be advocating this year, for comprehensive tax reform. Our current tax system is so incredibly complex, it is a large driver of what is causing problems for businesses of all size, including small ones.
On carbon pricing, the chamber has been on the record since 2011 in favour of carbon pricing as an effective way to reduce emissions, but the promise was always that there would be regulatory reductions associated with that. One of the things we've been watching in trying to understand where the carbon pricing debate is going is whether we, small business members particularly, see a reduction in regulatory requirements that would offset what some of those costs might be.
Right now, we're not seeing that. We're seeing carbon pricing, plus a clean fuel standard, plus a new methane regulation. It's sort of a pricing plus regulation, as opposed to pricing minus regulation. In the view of our members, the benefit of a tax is that it would be more efficient than those other regulatory approaches.
However, right now we're sort of getting the worst of both worlds, so any driver of costs for our members this year and going forward will be a challenge for them.