Mr. Simons has obviously made a strong case for why he thinks there's a problem.
I'll say a couple of things. First off, I think there is an inevitability to sales taxes in the online environment, so with regard to this debate over Netflix sales tax, the notion that somehow there are a whole lot of people out there who are about to drop their Netflix subscriptions and go to something else strikes me as highly unlikely. It's a well-priced product, and if you added the sales tax I don't think it would move the meter very much.
That said, there are some countries that are starting to experiment. I think there are some dangers about implementing across-the-board sales taxes for anybody that happens to sell. The compliance costs, the enforcement costs for modest sales into Canada might well result in many of those businesses avoiding the Canadian market altogether, and that would decrease consumer choice and lessen competition.
The last point I would make—with all respect to my colleague on the panel here—is that no Canadian company succeeds in the e-commerce environment by solely targeting the Canadian market, so the notion that somehow if only we taxed everybody trying to sell into the Canadian market there would be opportunities for Canadian businesses to succeed online, with respect, I don't think that's consistent with what we've seen.
Over the last decade or so, we've seen consistently that Canadian companies can compete in the global market, but the only way you compete in the global market is by competing in the global market. Trying to increase costs in the Canadian market for some of that competition isn't really an effective way to do that.