It is just the mathematics of it, the numerator over the denominator. While the numerator is just the nominal level of our tax collection, which can go up, the fact is that our economy is growing faster than that trajectory, so that the overall metric is decreasing. While we continue to collect more tax revenues because our economy is growing—we collect more income taxes, consumption taxes in the form of the GST, and corporate taxes even though we had a corporate rate reduction—the fact is that our economy is growing faster than the pace of tax collection. So we often use this metric as a touchstone to reflect the total tax burden on the Canadian economy.
On November 6th, 2014. See this statement in context.