Sure. Thank you.
In terms of the importance of trade to our economy, I have two quick comments.
One, from study after study, I think it's indisputable that the benefits of trade--whether it's NAFTA, whether it was the FTA that preceded it, or whether it's WTO--are crucially important to Canada. This is a small economy that absolutely depends on trade liberalization. Market access for us is absolutely crucial to our standard of living. So I would start with that.
Some people, a number of economists, for instance, call the nineties the “lost decade” in this country. There were some good reasons for that. One of the reasons was our incomprehensible desire to overtax Canadians. Never mind businesses for the moment, I'll just focus on individual Canadians and what we did with personal income tax rates, including payroll taxes. The tax burden on Canadians was way too high. It still is.
I think the finance minister made a statement the other day to that effect. And this is 2006. It certainly was true in the nineties. The nineties were particularly difficult years for the Canadian economy, for a variety of reasons. In terms of the opportunity to have a higher degree of disposable income, I would argue that part of the reason why a number of families...was tax policy in Canada through the nineties. A lot had to be done. With the budget in the year 2000, we basically started to address these. There is much more that needs to be done.
This is another one of those examples where you say, what's the role of trade? Where would we be if we hadn't negotiated the FTA and then the NAFTA? I suggest we would have been far worse off as an economy.
I won't take the time to go through the numbers in terms of what has happened to our GDP as a result of it. I did have the benefit, though, of having a look at a very useful publication--if you don't mind me taking half a second to mention it, Mr. Chair--which the foreign affairs and international trade department just put out, called NAFTA @ 10 . It's a very good document, and there are a number of good contributions from a variety of knowledgeable players.
One of them is from your backyard, Mr. Julian, in terms of Simon Fraser University. Richard Harris is an economist there who I thought made a pretty interesting statement. He said:
In virtually all domains in which economic measurement is possible—trade flows, investment, employment, consumer benefits, productivity growth, improved competition in product markets and reduced exposure to protectionist actions in the US export market—there have been important measurable and positive impacts of this agreement.
I think you could add to that list. Essentially, the standard of living of Canadians has been lifted as a result of the work we've done in that area. Whether we have other challenges...and I agree with you, we certainly do. I think we still have, as Ben just mentioned, in terms of our effective rate of tax on capital and what that means for investment in Canada. The fact that we're still an economy that taxes investment is a huge problem. And our personal income tax burden is still way too high.
There are specific things we would suggest to do there, but I won't take the time to get into them now.