Mr. Speaker, the hon. member will remember that we had a very good presentation by the head of the chamber of commerce for Kitchener who explicitly criticized the government for this mishmash of a tax credit here for textbooks and a tax credit there for transit, things which were ineffective. For instance, in the case of transit, the studies show that some 95% of the recipients would use those services anyway. The least effective way of helping students is some sort of tax credit on textbooks and does not help access one little bit.
However, the point that this chamber of commerce representative made is that we want simplicity in our tax system. If we have a myriad of tax credits requiring a mounting bureaucracy to administer and to make judgments, for example, is dance eligible, is horseback riding eligible, is soccer eligible, all of these unproductive activities detract from a productive tax system and this witness, and many other witnesses as well, made strong cases for broad-based tax relief.
Let the government get out of the decision making process of families, of soccer versus horseback riding, versus music, versus dance. Let the government not be such a social engineer. Let families make their own decision and let the government administer broad-based tax relief. That was always the philosophy of our government. That was the philosophy of the witnesses who spoke to us. That is the way to ensure greater productivity, and a streamlining and a simplification of the tax system rather than a complicating, bureaucracy-enhancing level of more and more silly little tax credits.