Thank you for that.
This is a very important question, and one that I agree with wholeheartedly. There is a very important need and opportunity to review tax expenditures. By my last count, there are roughly 128 of them in the federal tax system, which now cost more in terms of lost revenue than the entirety of what the federal government collects in personal income tax revenue each year.
Now, all the tax expenditures are not bad. Some of them, like the personal exemption, are worthwhile, and the same with RRSPs. We've done a study, in fact, where we've calculated that the federal government could do away with several of these tax expenditures, many of which are ineffective in terms of encouraging the desired behaviour, being regressive; that is, they're disproportionately benefiting higher-income earners.
By scaling back or eliminating many of these tax expenditures, we could in fact take out the two middle tax brackets in the old system, which would cost about $2 billion, leaving two rates, one at 15% for the overwhelming majority of Canadians, and another at 29% for roughly 2% of taxpayers. I think this is a really important opportunity to revisit tax expenditures that have grown quite dramatically, particularly since 2006, and to look towards a more simple pro-growth and efficient tax system.