Finance committee  I would say the same thing as Mr. Kesteven said. Capital markets are usually very quick to react. Regarding real estate investment trust funds, for instance, we noted some hotels and retirement homes were about to be purchased. In some cases, the estimates caused a sharp drop in

Finance committee  We looked at the data ourselves, and we can't find any rationale for it. There are a handful of countries, mostly small tax havens--Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, that sort of thing. We can't find any rationale. It does bring in more tax revenue for Canada. Really, to our mind, there

Finance committee  Yes.

Finance committee  We haven't until now had a number of REITs with a lot of foreign property ownership. However, there's the case that Mr. McCallum raised, Westfield, the Australian REIT that has a market cap the size of the entire Canadian market. We have a number of REITs now that are in a positi

Finance committee  Well, the way I've had it explained to me is that they can buy us but we can't buy them. What may in fact happen is that a number of the Canadian REITs could be purchased by foreign REITs as a result of this. It may limit their competitiveness. Some Canadian REITs may not exist

Finance committee  Not to my knowledge. There was no--

Finance committee  We're a relatively young market. I mean, 1994 was when Canadian REITs really came online. In the United States, for example, REITs began in 1960. So some countries have had time to get further ahead. They have more sophisticated structures--taxable subsidiary structures, for exam

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. My name is Chris Conway. I am the director of government relations for REALpac, the Real Property Association of Canada. We represent most of the TSX-listed real estate companies, including real estate investment trusts, otherwise known as REITs. Our m