Finance committee  I think the federal government has made tremendous strides on the corporate income tax side, to its credit. We're heading to a very competitive structure. A couple of years ago it got rid of the capital tax, which was really the silliest tax. We want to have capital, and we were fairly unique in directly taxing that.

Finance committee  We tend to think about retail sales taxes as consumer taxes, but anywhere from 30% to 40% of the revenue does come from business inputs, and a substantial chunk of that from machinery and equipment. If you're a provincial government...I find it hard in this environment to look at what's happening in our manufacturing sector and not move on one of the major impediments.

Finance committee  Yes, I think there are three fundamental factors, and you mentioned two of them. There's just the general malaise of the U.S. dollar connected to their trade and fiscal deficits. Secondly, there's the rise of commodities, and that's why we've risen more than the euro or the yen.

Finance committee  I'm just a little bit concerned with the context of the question. Some of the answers give a false sense of comfort, because the context was that the problems of the manufacturing and forestry industry are almost being uniquely related to the dollar. I would go further and say that the difficult period of transformation in these industries is going to continue, even if the dollar were to go down substantially.

Finance committee  I'll keep way within the five minutes and pass on an opening statement. I look forward to any questions the committee might have for me. How's that? That got you back on schedule.

Finance committee  Yes.

Finance committee  Let me start. First of all, to the credit of the current government and the previous government and the provinces, Canada has started to reinvest in post-secondary education. We just about killed the beast off in the 1980s and early 1990s, but we have fresh wind with that. We have a couple of weaknesses in graduate programs and the like, but we're fairly strong.

Finance committee  It's interesting. If you look at the participation in post-secondary education, while it's obviously still much higher for higher income levels, the biggest increase in participation in post-secondary education has been at lower incomes.

Finance committee  Well, that's the Statistics Canada statistic.

Finance committee  I guess the starting point is where the jobs are coming from. They're disproportionately coming from the west. Quebec and Ontario have been particularly weak. We have an important manufacturing sector, and we've seen a tremendous shedding of jobs in that area. As I noted before, the national statistics right now are completely meaningless, for a whole host of variables.

Finance committee  That's right, but people would have been paying when they filed their tax report, in April, of the acquisition this year.

Finance committee  That would have been paid in May and June.

Finance committee  Well, if you look at the fiscal results today, there are two very striking features to them. One is that departments have been underspending their budgets, as they did in the last fiscal year. You have to assume that at some point they'll catch up, because they're underspending what they're allocated to spend.

Finance committee  No, most high-income people would be paying instalment payments, plus they would have been paying—

Finance committee  I'm going to give the rationale on why I said that. It's been a source of frustration to me all the time I worked in government, because everybody would always say that with all that spending, there have to be billions and billions of dollars that somehow just disappear, so you can cut and no one feels it.