To answer the first question, I can give you a partial analysis of some of the main features of the 2005 budget, because as table 6, which I handed out earlier, demonstrates—and I apologize for the typographical error because each of the two pairs of columns should be marked 2004 and 2008. So 2004 is not the last Liberal budget, but it's very close because there were not really significant changes between 2004 and 2005. Look at the first column, table 6, capital gains exclusions under “Personal income tax measures”. In the column that should be headed 2004, the cost to the federal government in forgone revenues for the capital gain exclusion would have been $2.8 billion for 2004. This budget puts that number at $5.2 billion. That number is drawn from this government's “Tax Expenditure Report, 2007”, which was released on February 19, 2008, just a week before this budget was released. This increase in this particular tax expenditure, which is symptomatic of the differences between 2005 and 2008 budgets, is because taxpayers now are being offered many more ways to not pay taxes on capital gains.
To give you another example, the dividend tax credit, 2004—this is in the same column—would have been $1.5 billion. In 2008 it's estimated to be costing $2.5 billion annually. This increase relates to the fact that shareholders are often being given a tax benefit for taxes that corporations no longer pay. In my extended written submissions, which will be distributed to you after they are translated, you will see that under the current dividend tax credit scheme, a person who has income that only comes from corporate dividends can receive $50,000 per year tax free. This is much more generous treatment than we give the poorest people in the country, and there's no comparison with the GST rate cuts and so on.
So this little table will give you a really good snapshot of the much more numerous tax expenditures that are given to capital owners and owners of corporations. They are really increasing the total of all tax expenditures, which are revenues forgone by the government. The number between 2004 and 2008 has easily doubled to a total, for 2008, of $74 billion of forgone revenue.
Am I apolitical? I'm deeply committed to women's issues.