Still taxing after 100 years

or indirect. On the contrary, the provinces, and, by consequence, the municipalities which derive their taxation powers from the provinces, are confined, in the raising of their revenues, to measures of direct taxation. For this reason, since the outbreak of the war, I have hesitated to bring down a measure of federal income taxation … I have not regarded it as expedient, except in case of manifest public necessity, such as I believe exists at the present time, that the Dominion should invade the field to which the provinces are solely confined for the raising of their revenue…

Canada is not a country of concentrated wealth. We have a sparse population of some 8,000,000 people, scattered over an immense territory as large in area as the United States of America, almost as large as the continent of Europe. The result of that is that the cost of administration of an income tax measure will be quite substantial, and the cost of administration is always a factor which should be had in mind in connection with the imposition of taxation. Generally speaking, if the cost of administration of a tax is disproportionately heavy, it is not a good tax…

I have placed no time limit upon this taxation measure; but I do suggest, and I should like this suggestion to be on Hansard, that after the war is over this taxation measure should be deliberately reviewed. What I have in mind is this: In the period after this war, as in the past, we will continue to invite people to come to this country. We shall need men of enterprise, men of ability, to bring in capital and develop our immense undeveloped resources. In reviewing this measure after the war, I think consideration should be given to the question whether the taxation is so heavy that it would operate to prevent men of that type from coming to this country and giving us the benefit of their enterprise and their capital and their ability...

We cannot see very far ahead in these days. We do not know how long this war will last. We do not know what the attitude of the people of this world or of this country will be upon many questions, social, industrial, financial and fiscal. Therefore I have placed no time limit upon this measure, but merely have placed upon Hansard the suggestion that, a year or two after the war is over, the measure should be deliberately reviewed by the Minister of Finance and the Government of the day, with the view of judging whether it is suitable to the conditions which then prevail.