Yes, I have a couple of them. Thank you.
Just picking up on the point about costs that would be tax-deductible, it seems to me that some of these cost items would be capital costs, which would be subject to capital cost allowances, and notwithstanding the generosity of the government with their accelerated capital cost allowance, I don't know if these expenditures would qualify for that or not. I haven't studied it closely enough.
In the last budget, they came out with some accelerated CCA. If they are capital costs, they would be tax-deductible, but in terms of cashflow, it's over a few years.
When you responded to the gazette—that would be the special committee of cabinet, the secretariat that supports that—you heard back, “We hear you. We'll try to work with you to try to make something work that is palatable to your sector.” As I said earlier, and stand by that, that's somewhat hollow. Nonetheless, here you are trying to get something that works for you. What I hear you saying is that when you go around to the various departments, everyone is listening and nodding sagely, but no one wants to take ownership.
I think that although some things do change, some things do remain the same. For example, if you're looking for a tax credit, that would come from the Department of Finance, and the finance department would clearly be non-receptive to that, and they would say you have to go to a sponsoring department, and it will have to come out of their A-base if there is some kind of granting provision, etc. We've all been there. We all have the T-shirts on that. So if you don't have a department that is prepared to take on the responsibility for this, because it would come out of their A-base, then everyone says “Well, you should go and talk to agriculture”, and someone else says “You should go and talk to environment”, and someone else says “You should go and talk to industry”, and someone else says “You should go and talk to public safety”. This is the dilemma I suspect you're in.
I don't know if the government has any solution for this. I haven't studied it in detail, but it seems to me that given the numbers you're quoting here, it is putting a burden that is unrealistic on the retail sector, and I would hope that the government would assign some department the responsibility to try to fix this, because that's what was indicated, as I understand it, when you gave your brief to the special committee of cabinet, and they said that the government should work with you to come up with an acceptable solution.
While there is no department that's been assigned responsibility, we have the same issue with counterfeit goods. Everyone keeps pointing at everybody else. In the meantime, some of your members are going to be in jeopardy, so I hope the government takes this seriously and assigns a department. Maybe it has to be cost-shared among a few departments, but it seems to me that your position is quite reasonable. You understand it has to be done. It's just that suddenly you just can't have something foisted upon you so that you have to absorb this cost when clearly you can't.
I don't know if you want to respond at all.