Mr. Speaker, this was not deliberate but just a slip of the tongue. I talk about this paper all the time. It is not in the public domain. It will be published by the Fraser Institute. It was subjected there to the scrutiny of scholars.
There members will see a calculation for the introduction of a flat tax for income earners of different categories, like single parents, seniors and so on, with all the provisions taken account of by a technical expert in the Library of Parliament using Government of Canada statistics.
According to his simulations, business income taxes would rise by about $5 billion under one of our specific proposals. This would make it possible to have practically no changes in the income taxes payable by individuals.
On the other hand, I am distrustful of these results because they cannot simulate the dynamic adjustments to which I referred-I would be happy to give a copy of this graph-in terms of simultaneously lowering the tax rate on high income earners and taking away tax loopholes.
You must remember hearing me say regularly that one of the troubles with the tax system is that the rich do not pay enough
because they have all those loopholes. If this is what you believe, then you must agree that if those loopholes are closed, they would pay more.
We then lower the tax rate. It is totally astounding how the balance of the two things over the last 25 years has resulted in the top income earners paying exactly the same share of all personal income taxes as they did before. The simplification and the dynamic benefits that one cannot quantify will make the flat tax a very good thing for Canadians.