Finance committee  Well, it sounds like I said the same thing about ten minutes ago, so yes, of course, I agree, but I want to temper that with the following. Our surpluses have been absolutely astounding over the last seven years under both governments—just so you people on both sides of the table know that we've had this budgeting process that creates large surpluses.

Finance committee  Did they link it?

Finance committee  I realize it did. I thought it had to do with my gas prices at the pump.

Finance committee  Interest rates are absolutely important for business, and they're important for the government too.

Finance committee  You're leading the witness.

Finance committee  Creating the right business climate is important, so controlling inflation is important.

Finance committee  Low interest rates are important. Is the GST rate reduction the way to do that? If you talk to our members who had to do whatever tweaking they had to do to their business systems to deal with the GST, they wouldn't be that enamoured of the cut.

Finance committee  I have a definite opinion. I don't like piecemeal. I've never liked piecemeal. It's like a bandage approach to something that's broken. We all recognize that equalization is broken. I think it's been in play for maybe forty years, since the seventies, although I'm not quite sure when it all came in.

Finance committee  Debt reduction is still a very important issue for us, because we're looking at demographics. We look around the room, and we look at who might be retiring, going out five to ten years. We feel we need to get the interest expense of this government down. It's been at about $40 billion.

Finance committee  Certainly. This really comes from a line of thought that when you look at income taxes versus consumption taxes, consumption taxes are good taxes and income taxes are bad taxes. I'd have to be a theoretical tax person to explain that better to you. I'm only repeating the published tax efficiency of both those types of taxes.

Finance committee  No. It's in the Ontario or the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. We do align ourselves, I'll be quite honest. There is no use reinventing the wheel, and we think the Canadian Chamber and the Ontario Chamber do very good work.

Finance committee  Actually I haven't done the math to know what it would cost, and it is very important to understand the decrease in revenue. The $150,000 is a magic bullet number that we look at south of the border in the U.S., and in the U.S. it kicks in around $150,000, or it might even be $168,000.

Finance committee  They do, but they can roll that over if they buy another home of equal or more value.

Finance committee  Eventually it comes out here too, in your....

Finance committee  Directly to the municipality? Is that what you were saying?