Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Burnaby—Douglas for pointing out a perfect graphic illustration or example of the point I was making of how our tax system is really stacked against the ordinary person with these advantages that some of us have not even realized.
We owe a debt of gratitude to our colleague from Hamilton Mountain for pointing this out. All the salaries in a business are tax deductible, including the $2 million, $3 million, $5 million or $8 million compensation packages for CEOs in some of these big corporations.
This means that we are underwriting or subsidizing with a tax deduction this outrageous CEO salary issue. I think it is an excellent illustration. It is poignant the way my colleague from Hamilton Mountain pointed out that by 10 o'clock I believe on January 1 some of these CEOs have already made more than the average income.
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation used to have tax freedom day around June 11. It used to have a corporate tax freedom day, but it kept getting in the way of the New Year's Eve celebrations, so it had to cancel it. These corporations were already at an advantage before they had taken their bells and whistles off for New Year's Eve.
The other thing is that stock options should be expensed on the financial statements of the companies where we invest. Some of these white collar corporate governance issues are actually blue collar issues. Many of us in the trade union movement have our pensions invested far and wide in corporate Canada in the financial sector. We need to know because some of these stock options do not show up and only the CEO's salary shows up. The CEO might be sitting on stock options which are greater than the total net worth of the company.
We should have a right to know those investments. We have to be able to trust the financial statements of the companies where our pension plans are investing.