All right.

Thank you, panel.

I just want to be clear. In my mind there's a clear difference between what we would call tax evasion or tax avoidance and tax benefits and tax allowances. One is bad; the other is good.

I always believed that, if Canadians were to do all of the things that they should do to try to earn a good living such as get an education, work hard, and handle their money in a prudent fashion, and if they make a good life for themselves, to the extent that the chances were very slim that they would ever be dependent on the government, maybe they should have some sort of a reward, a small reward, to do that. That's what we call tax breaks, tax breaks for Canadians.

Now over the last eight years our government has lowered the average tax to Canadian families by, I think, about $3,600 a year. I would suggest that the average Canadian middle-class family does not put that $3,600 a year into a sock somewhere every year and just let it sit there. They put it back into the economy because they buy things. That's good for the economy. As a matter of fact, just at the bottom line, for every dollar in tax breaks that the federal government gives to a Canadian family, they reap 5¢ just at the basic level on every dollar that's put back into the economy. It only has to turn over 20 times in the economy, which could happen in a day, and the government has that dollar back. That's good for the economy.

If some panellists here today think that tax breaks for Canadian families or for working Canadians are not necessarily a good thing, I would like to argue that they are a very good thing and that we should do whatever we can to support them. It doesn't stay in a sock; it gets put back into the economy.

I just have one question.

Mr. Gillespie, you talked about individual long-term care insurance. I think that's a great idea. I think that anyone who is willing to put money into a program like that so that they relieve the government of supporting them when they're in their senior years should maybe get some sort of reward, such as a tax allowance, on the premiums that they pay because, at the end of the day, the government is going to come out far better than if they didn't do that.

Is that a good suggestion?

Dick Harris

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