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International competitiveness is another critical tax-policy objective. For an open economy like Canada’s, operating in the context of ever-increasing globalization, it would be risky to effectively penalize CCPCs at this time, while other countries like the U.K. and the U.S. are reducing their tax rates for private businesses. International and Canadian investors and entrepreneurs have choices, and we would like for them to choose Canada — creating jobs and otherwise generally improving the welfare of Canadians. The government does acknowledge this, which is good, but it draws a distinction between reinvesting in active business activities rather than so-called passive investments.

The reality is that all types of investments help to create jobs and improve productivity. For example, investing $100 in my own business that I control versus investing in a business that is controlled by somebody else is in both cases investing $100 in business activities, directly or indirectly. That’s precisely why we give quite favourable tax treatment to portfolio investments made by foreign pension funds in Canadian companies. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t likewise give quite favourable tax treatment to Canadian investors.

Canada is best served by a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem working to innovate and move us forward. Seventy-five days isn’t long enough to sufficiently talk through the ins and outs of this kind of massive reform. We strongly support meaningful and constructive engagement toward the modernization of our income tax system, but we need to do this right. We may want to reform the system — but we do not want to deform it.