Finance committee  The establishment of a plan has to start upstream, with equitable rules for employers and employees through the piece. We've made previous representations related to the funding of pension plans and the current imbalance in some of the use of the surplus entitlements.

Finance committee  Yes, we agree that there should be government's continued commitment to fiscal prudence.

Finance committee  Thank you for that question. One of the things I mentioned in my discussion was the need to look at the spending, because for Canada's current social benefits that everybody treasures, there is an escalating cost driven by demographics. We're not getting any younger, I unfortuna

Finance committee  Good morning, Mr. Chairman and committee members. I'm Michael Conway, chief executive and national president of Financial Executives International Canada. FEI Canada is a voluntary membership association comprised of 2,000 chief financial officers and senior financial executive

Finance committee  That's a good question. We're recognizing that probably this big thing is not going to skinny down to this little thing any time real soon. As with everything in life, there is a bit of a balance. We were trying to put forward some recommendations. Maybe to respond more fully t

Finance committee  Well, actually, within our submission we did detail out various recommendations, like the reduction of CCA classes, consideration of joint personal tax returns, and permitting private corporations eligible for small business deductions to use accounting income for taxable income.

Finance committee  Yes, there are several reasons it's in our submission. Number one, it's just the demographics. This provides more time for people to put money away. The government has extended the mandatory date for concluding CPP contributions, I believe, from age 68 to 70. We're now saying to

Finance committee  Well, I guess we have two things. One is that we suggested being revenue-neutral over the short to medium term. For example, in the writeoff of equipment, if it's going to be written off over a short period of time versus a long period of time, over the medium term it will still

Finance committee  Absolutely. We mentioned group tax reporting. Most countries in the world have group tax reporting. This is where a variety of companies in a corporate group put a consolidated tax return together, rather than individual returns.

Finance committee  It's really what it costs in terms of the complexity involved, and also the fairness of it. Large corporations go into elaborate planning to effectively get consolidated tax returns. For smaller firms, the burden is disproportionate, so they can't. That's not fair. And with all d

Finance committee  We certainly.... That's one. In various submissions we have referred to reduction of the number of CCA classes. There are 40-odd CCA classes and a lot of.... There are very many reductions that we'd love to work with.

Finance committee  Right. We have some more specific actions, and we'd be willing to work with you. For example, for small companies, why not just have their accounting income equal their taxable income and eliminate all the reconciliations that these poor small businesses are trying to do but real

Finance committee  We haven't looked at it in great detail, but we were appreciative of the reduction, recognizing that everything is a balancing act between the need to balance the deficit and the date and timing of when the EI rate increase was scheduled. We were supportive of the rollback down t

Finance committee  Our recommendation is to encourage Canadians to put more away in retirement planning. Clearly there's a challenge, as the demographic curve continues for all of us, to make sure that all Canadians have appropriate retirement income. We went to the point of saying that there are m

Finance committee  I'll direct the question to Mr. Effer.