I'm sorry if you find that I'm belabouring this point, but the fact remains that when the agreement was negotiated, I firmly believe some thought should have been given to this aspect of the issue. Indeed, as you said, the current framework in which the Income Tax Act is applied does not lend itself to this. However, you did raise one point. Since different companies operate in different fiscal environments -- and I always come back to the Canadian government's generous gift of $1 billion to the Americans -- the normal thing to do would have been to make some interesting arrangements for companies from a taxation standpoint. After all, the legislator is the one who decided whether or not to give an advantage to an industry in order to help it out. Potentially then, a plan could have been formulated to give companies the choice of opting, or not, for a different tax treatment.
The committee is examining Bill C-24 and all of its potential, or unlikely, repercussions. If the government opted to give an advantage to the forest industry, who should be issuing directives regarding specific tax treatments?