Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for his kind words and extend some of my own.
I have enormous respect for the hon. member for Broadview—Greenwood's long and principled crusade for tax reform in this country. He has been against the stream in his party and his government in calling for a single tax that would ultimately give Canadians what I advocate as well.
Would I support the elimination of all the so-called tax expenditures? Of course not because the single largest tax expenditure is the RRSP which most Canadians rely on for their retirement savings.
There are of course tax preferences that some large companies have which I think are unreasonable in terms of creating a hugely complex tax system and which require tens of thousands of tax lawyers, accountants and bureaucrats at Revenue Canada at untold public expense to administer.
However I think the solution is not to eliminate those things while keeping the same tax rates thereby squeezing more revenue out of the economy. If we are going to eliminate exemptions and deductions and credits for individuals and for companies, we need to do it within the context of overall radical tax reform which results in overall lower tax levels for Canadians. On that condition I would support it.