Finance committee  Right, and that's in relation to provincial actions that have been taken since that announcement.

Finance committee  I can only speak to business income tax revenues, but those take a long time to come in. Right now, the fiscal year we have that we're satisfied is complete data is 2005. So any data we'd be providing you on that kind of question would be a forecast, which, as Isabelle said, is p

Finance committee  Sure. I can just enumerate them here. We have a reduction in general corporate income tax rate to 15% by 2012, from 21% in 2007. The most recent announcements about those reductions took place in the economic statement. The corporate surtax was eliminated for all corporations i

Industry committee  I'm still sort of trying to process the question.

Industry committee  The only answer, I think, is that for smaller, Canadian-controlled private corporations, there is refundability. That's because those types of companies have greater difficulty in accessing capital than do public corporations, but there is the refundability element. Refundability

Industry committee  I'm not sure I understand what you're saying about.... They have to have a certain amount of what in order to qualify?

Industry committee  We're certainly very interested in simplification of the tax system, and we know that our colleagues at the CRA are also interested in simplification, and we are actively looking at ways of simplifying the administration and compliance of the credits.

Industry committee  While it is true that Canada ranks low in terms of business R and D as a percentage of GDP, since the inception of the SR and ED tax incentives the growth in this ratio has been strong in Canada relative to other countries. More generally, the question of why the ratio is low has

Industry committee  For example, in sector A, R and D may be comparable to other countries, but when you put it all together, because of our sectoral variation, we rank low. That's one factor. But the point I'm making is that the tax system is not the only factor that influences it.

Industry committee  Right now the SR and ED incentives are $2.6 billion, and they are provided to over 12,000 businesses in Canada, which is quite advantageous in an international context.

Industry committee  I guess I'm not sure of the exact....

Industry committee  Should we just provide you with a table? We have it somewhere in all this paper and we can provide it to you.

Industry committee  There are more than just tax considerations in the situation you're talking about. If the government decided, for instance, to provide support to a particular sector, the first question would be how best to provide that support. In the recent past, the way we've approached the ta

Industry committee  Renewable energy is a special case. It relates to the externality argument we were talking about in the context of the SR and ED. There's a public benefit to be had by encouraging people to use those energies. It's not just a benefit to a company or industry. That's why an except

Industry committee  I'm not sure I understand the question.