Mr. Speaker, this is more of a comment. I do not have a question.
The member talked about having read the proposal, so let us start there. On the issue of retroactive taxation, proposed section 246.1 of the proposal is an extra tax on CDAs, capital dividend accounts. That has been confirmed by tax specialists and tax accountants.
In section 84.1, there is a problem. Tax specialist John Wonfor presented before the committee and said that it is not true that, as the government says, it is not retroactive. Different ministers and the Prime Minister have said different things, saying it is retroactive or it is not. Mr. Wonfor said, “That's not true, because you have to look back at all the transactions and determine whether you have a section 84.1 problem.” The proposal the government has put forward is retroactive, despite all the talk on that side that it is not.
Furthermore, when we go to the taxation of estates, double and triple taxation was confirmed by Allan Lanthier. Allan Lanthier is a fellow of more accounting associations than I can even describe. He is an FCA and a CPA right now. He is also the president of the Canada Tax Foundation. He said, “I was going to say they're murdered by these proposals, which was a bad turn of phrase in the context of post-mortem planning, but yes, they can face tax rates up to 92%. Those are the proposals with respect to section 84.1 that the government's put out for consultation.”
When we read the proposal, they are retroactive, and they punish small businesses, estates, and the family farm.