Finance committee  Do you mean the Jenkins report?

Finance committee  Yes.

Finance committee  Yes, they have.

Finance committee  No.

Finance committee  —but I understand—

Finance committee  The tax differential—

Finance committee  I don't know those numbers—

Finance committee  They're getting a great deal.

Finance committee  That's correct.

Finance committee  When the budget speech came out, it seemed to indicate they were dealing only with cases where someone was using a third party contractor, they hired XYZ Engineering Company to do part of their SR and ED program. Then when Bill C-45 came out, they used the wording to actually encapture other parts besides third party contractors, the normal contractors.

Finance committee  You're asking good questions. The government has tried diligently for a decade or more to reduce complexity and lack of predictability in the SR and ED program, and as other people have alluded to here, that continues to be the swan song. It is very difficult to do that. None of the measures the government is proposing to introduce would actually do anything other than make it more complex and more expensive for taxpayers.

Finance committee  The analysis we've done on large non-CCPCs that form part of our knowledge base indicates it's between 5% and 8%. That industry is different from the manufacturing group though.

Finance committee  The proxy was put in place in 2002 to simplify things. As Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters has indicated, it's really to reduce audit angst. When Canada Revenue Agency gets a claim that uses traditional overhead, they have a real problem with it because it can be neither proven nor disproven.

Finance committee  Absolutely. I can tell you that for one of our major clients, the difference in the projected R and D in the next year is very, very significant. How much is it related to this? A lot, I think, but it's also affected by other world factors as well.

Finance committee  No, other than anecdotal information and talking with people who have practices in the major accounting firms spread across Canada. I'm not sure whether the data they were expressing was across Canada or simply the western numbers, but some of them were even higher than the numbers I gave you.