Finance committee  Given the complexity and the magnitude of it, I would suggest a royal commission so that it's all-encompassing. It would have to have a robust enough mandate and timeline that it could peel apart the Income Tax Act incompleteness. It could not be partisan, and it would have to combine everybody's view and make something that's good for the 21st century, because it hasn't been updated.

Finance committee  Are you referring specifically to the TOSI, the tax on split income?

Finance committee  Many of our members are impacted, and the real issue is they don't know how they're impacted. That is due to the complexity and the lack of description or scenarios they can rely on. When you're working with income tax, you can read the Income Tax Act and you can read the explanatory notes, but you really decide on how to structure something once you see how the Department of Finance or the CRA has interpreted that legislation.

Finance committee  Yes.

Finance committee  I completely agree with Mr. Irving. One thing I would add on to the productivity front is that we have to get to the point where good environmental stewardship can coexist with economic growth. They can coexist. They are not mutually exclusive. When they coexist, the projects are better.

Finance committee  On our fifth pillar, I was getting long-winded, so I skipped it. I was respecting the committee's time and that of the other witnesses. I was at six minutes and I thought I'd better close. The fifth pillar is labour force development. We said we need to continue to develop our labour workforce by expanding incentives to attract Canadians to relocate to New Brunswick and improving our recognition of foreign credentials for those in New Brunswick and those who want to come here.

Finance committee  The major one is to make sure there are opportunities and that people are aware of the opportunities in New Brunswick, or in other Maritime provinces, because Toronto is the—

Finance committee  I wasn't going to say that, because there are people from Ontario here, but there are a lot of draws to Ontario. People know about Toronto. They know about Calgary. They know about Vancouver. To the comment that I made at the beginning, though, I was born in northern New Brunswick and I truly believe New Brunswick is the best place to live.

Finance committee  It's mainly continuation. There have been trade missions that have been led by various parties and various governments to encourage exports. Governments have been doing a very good job of opening up free markets—I think the number that was stated yesterday was 1.5 billion consumers or businesses who have access to the Canadian government at the conclusion of the USMCA.

Finance committee  Thank you. I've been pretty much exclusively in income tax since 1999. I think nothing should be off the table or out of bounds. The Income Tax Act is probably three or four inches thick, and some of it is not written in either official language. You have to be very careful when you're reading it.

Finance committee  Uncertainty is the death knell for business. If a potential investor looks at a project and is not really sure what the requirements will be on their initial study, it will kill it on the boardroom table without going beyond a preliminary investigation. If they can't put some degree of certainty around a project, then the project doesn't really get legs and doesn't get the sponsorship behind the approvers.

Finance committee  I think that it would be very wise to commit to such a timeframe.

Finance committee  The message I would send to the investment community is that there's a focus on making sure the financial house is in order, and to communicate to the global community that Canada's serious about making sure that its financial house is in order and that in the next downturn to come we will be able to weather it effectively and efficiently—

Finance committee  Thank you. Chairperson Easter, committee members, fellow witnesses, good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before this committee to discuss what the Saint John Region Chamber of Commerce, the chamber, feels are considerations that should be included in the next federal budget.