Mr. Speaker, I have a two-part question for the parliamentary secretary.
I heard him say that the committee's Liberal majority report draws no conclusions and makes no recommendations on whether the tax base should be broadened to include food, pharmaceutical products and the like. However, the same report says that a simplified system will be adopted for small businesses so that they will only have to report once a year, simply by subtracting purchases from total sales.
Clearly, if the system is to be simplified and if the tax is going to be called a business transfer tax, then everything will have to be taxed. That is the hypothesis behind this model. Can the parliamentary secretary tell me if the recommendation pertaining to small businesses would still allow them both to preserve their current accounting methods and to report as proposed in the Liberal committee report or will they once again have to adopt a different accounting method, one which would take into consideration taxable and tax-free purchases as well as taxable and tax-free sales? That is the first question I would like him to answer. If there continues to be exceptions, then the system will not work. Therefore, to say that the report draws no conclusions and makes no recommendations on whether to broaden the tax base to food is to lack courage. The hypotheses underlying the proposed simplification of the business transfer tax would clearly indicate quite another matter.
The second part of my question has to do with the parliamentary secretary's comment that low and middle-income earners would be compensated, regardless of the new system implemented. How does he explain the fact that families with two young children will receive the same credit, regardless of whether their children are 12 and 14 years old, or 14 and 7 years old years, or whether in one case, a child is sick and needs medication? How can he guarantee that both families will have the same consumption patterns? How can he be certain of the amount these two families pay in taxes? How can he say this credit system is effective? These are questions which I would like the parliamentary secretary to answer.