Finance committee  I would encourage people to read the paper. I don't have anything to elaborate on what's in the summary there. If I can indulge the chair, I would like to say something about sick leave.

Finance committee  There have been two questions asked about it, and if I don't say something I'm going to damage some internal organs here.

Finance committee  Let's put the context of public service sick leave benefits in the context of overall benefits. When I retired, I had six weeks vacation, three weeks sick leave, a professional development day, a family support day. I got Monday and Friday at Easter. I got Remembrance Day. So it's put in the context of overall benefits.

Finance committee  I think that studies done in the United States talked about huge losses for that reason.

Finance committee  I think that Alexandre could better answer that question.

Finance committee  You're right. I've never seen polls on why people for their personal income taxes are referring to H&R; Block. It might be the increased complexity. It may be the growing lack of numeracy in our population. I don't know.

Finance committee  I completely agree with you. The tax system is too complex. I do my personal tax return myself. It is quite simple. However, my business is set up as a company. As a result, I have to pay an accountant $3,500 a year for him to be aware of all the details. It kind of brings us back to what we were saying about the tax rate of small businesses in comparison to large businesses.

Finance committee  That goes to show with all these pieces of legislation, the holes that are available in them are large enough to drive huge convoys through. I wonder, what's the point?

Finance committee  In the debate about the economy, everything seems to be fixated on redistributing income, and I think we've become so wrapped up in that analysis and a lot about who's going to benefit from income splitting and so on, we forget the number one solution to all these problems is good economic growth.

Finance committee  There are a couple of things. People talk about our knowing the marginal impact that the changes in income splitting are going to have to the labour supply of women as if we know it to the decimal point. One of the problems with that type of analysis, one reason I was never a fan of this when I was at Statistics Canada and am still not a fan, is that it assumes other things are equal.

Finance committee  The distinction between voluntary and mandatory sometimes is overdrawn. We've seen in the past, for example, in the late 1990s, a lot of Canadians didn't believe CPP was on a sound footing. As a result, you could see one reason the savings rate was high in the 1990s was people didn't think CPP would be there.

Finance committee  I'm rather cynical about it and my cynicism is bred in particular by.... I actually burst out laughing recently when I read that Ontario had balanced budget legislation, and you think, “Ontario today lives under balanced budget legislation?”

Finance committee  Some people are always going to do the wrong thing. I don't think it's government's role to prevent people from doing anything in our society.

Finance committee  If people on their own want to be scared by financial institutions into saving more, fine. People are always responsible for their own actions. But, for people to tell government—

Finance committee  I think when it comes to pension savings, we're very much of the view that voluntary is better than mandatory. One of the problems with pensions in this country—and Malcolm Hamilton now researching at the C.D. Howe Institute, has done a lot of work on this over the years—is that people are scared a lot by financial institutions into saving too much.