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Results: 136 - 150 of 459
Yves Giroux
View Yves Giroux Profile
Yves Giroux
2021-03-18 11:31
With respect to the wealth tax, as some of your colleagues pointed out, we have been quite busy. I could say I had a full head of hair before the pandemic and I lost it as a result of hard work, but that would not be true as you all know. We have, nonetheless, been quite busy. For now we don't have plans to update our work on the wealth tax, but if it's the desire of the committee for us to do so, we would certainly undertake to do that and we could provide the committee with a timeline under which we would be able to do that. As I said, if it's of interest to the committee, we'd be happy to undertake that work.
The alternative to increasing the Borrowing Authority Act or the borrowing limit would be to decrease spending in other areas to ensure that the government did not bust that ceiling but still delivered on core areas of priority, or increased its overall revenues to ensure that its debt ceiling was not busted. Besides increasing taxes or revenues, or decreasing spending in other areas to ensure that it continues to provide services in areas that are determined as key, there are not that many alternatives to increasing the borrowing authority or the borrowing limit.
View Ted Falk Profile
CPC (MB)
View Ted Falk Profile
2021-03-18 11:33
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Giroux and Ms. Yan, for your testimony this morning at committee.
I think that penalizing the individuals who have become wealthy is very short-sighted. I think the government should be focused on creating initiatives and plans for individuals to become wealthy, for our country to prosper and for there to be economic growth and abundance here.
I'm wondering if you can comment on that. Have you seen anything at all from this government that would indicate they have plans for people to prosper and to become wealthy?
Yves Giroux
View Yves Giroux Profile
Yves Giroux
2021-03-18 11:34
That's a broad question. Generally speaking, the best way to increase wealth across a country is to increase the productive capacity of an economy. That could be done in a few ways, but not that many ways.
One way is to increase the number of people who participate in the labour force, by providing incentives to work and join the labour force. Another good way is to provide incentives to increase the capital, the machinery and equipment. Finally, there are measures that increase productivity, and these take a variety of ways, depending on the sector that you are targeting or looking at. These are generally the main ways of increasing the wealth of a nation.
As to whether we have seen that many initiatives from the government, that's an area that's probably highly sensitive politically and policy-wise, so I'll let each and every one of you be the judge of that, because different persons may have different perspectives on that. By that, I mean that some investments that are socially oriented might increase productivity in the economy, while others could be reducing the productive capacity of an economy, and not all investments are created equal.
View Ted Falk Profile
CPC (MB)
View Ted Falk Profile
2021-03-18 11:35
Thank you.
I have a very quick question before I turn my time over to Mr. Cumming. The government has indicated that they don't have fiscal anchors. Instead, they're using the terminology “fiscal guardrails”. Can you very briefly explain to this committee and to Canadians the difference between an anchor and a guardrail?
Yves Giroux
View Yves Giroux Profile
Yves Giroux
2021-03-18 11:36
That's a very important distinction.
An anchor is a goal you have that's guiding the overall fiscal decisions: spending, taxing and so on. A guardrail, rather—at least as described by the government—is something that will determine when you stop some types of expenditures. In that case, the guardrails have been expressed, at least so far, as the labour market indicators: the unemployment rate, the number of hours worked and the participation rate, if I'm not mistaken. One is shorter term. The other is longer term.
View James Cumming Profile
CPC (AB)
Thank you, and thank you to the witnesses.
Mr. Giroux, it's good to see you again. Thank you for the work you do.
You have talked about measurables. It strikes me that within Bill C-14 or the fiscal update we see significant spending and unallocated spending. At the very least, should there not at least be some outcome-based analysis when putting these numbers together?
You've talked about productivity. You've talked about growth rates. You've talked about efficiencies. When I look at the level of spending that we've had—the second-highest level of spending in the G7, with also the highest rate of unemployment—should we not at least have some form of outcome-based spending so we can do an analysis to see if it's effective?
Yves Giroux
View Yves Giroux Profile
Yves Giroux
2021-03-18 11:37
That's certainly among the best practices for governments to decide how they allocate spending. They have to have in mind an achievement, a target or a goal that they're pursuing, whether they quantify it publicly or not—that's probably up to them—but I would hope that they would have these types of trade-offs or quantified objectives in mind.
I haven't seen anything—yet at least—from the government on recent measures. I don't think I've seen that very often in the Canadian government setting, to be honest, but that's certainly something that should be top of mind among decision-makers when they make these allocation decisions.
View James Cumming Profile
CPC (AB)
On the analysis that you did on growth rates, are you somewhat concerned that those growth rates are achievable without knowing whether the spending anticipated will be related to productivity, to innovation—things that will drive the Canadian economy?
Yves Giroux
View Yves Giroux Profile
Yves Giroux
2021-03-18 11:38
It's certain that it's a bit more difficult to determine whether an investment or an expenditure will have a long-term or short-term impact when we don't know the areas that will be targeted. I assume you're referring to the $70 billion to $100 billion mentioned in the fall economic statement. It's very difficult to determine precisely what will be the short- and longer-term impacts on the economy of these expenditures without knowing exactly where they will go. Not all spending is created equal when it comes to generating economic growth and generally social welfare.
View Annie Koutrakis Profile
Lib. (QC)
View Annie Koutrakis Profile
2021-03-18 11:39
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Giroux, for your testimony this morning and for your service.
I think it's important to remind all Canadians who may be watching today of what Bill C-14 is and what we're studying here at committee. The only spending Parliament is being asked to approve through Bill C-14 is to introduce a temporary and immediate support for low- and middle-income families who are entitled to the CCB, the Canada child benefit, totalling up to $1,200 in 2021 for each child under the age of six; to provide the regional development agencies an additional $206.7 million; to replicate the CEBA loan limits for gap-filling programs and the RRRF gap-filling capacity; to ease the financial burden of student debt for up to 1.4 million Canadians by eliminating the interest on repayment of the federal portion of the Canada student loans and Canada apprentice loans for one year, 2021-22; to provide funding of up to $505.7 million as part of the new safe long-term care fund to support long-term care facilities, including funding to prevent the spread of COVID-19 infection, outbreaks and deaths in supported care facilities; to provide additional funding of up to $133 million to support access to things like virtual care, mental health tools and substance use programming; and to provide up to $262.6 million for a suite of COVID-19 initiatives, including testing, medical research, countermeasures, vaccine funding and developments, border and travel measures and isolation sites. I think it's important to put that on record and to remind everyone of what Parliament is being asked to approve.
Having said that, I hear my colleagues on the opposition harping on the fact that there's the lack of a budget.
You're right that this is an unprecedented event. It has never happened before in our Canadian history. We've never had to deal with such a pandemic, and I think it merits keeping that in mind.
Having said that, Mr. Giroux, I'm interested to know what were or are your thoughts on the biweekly updates provided to the committee by the Department of Finance earlier last year.
Yves Giroux
View Yves Giroux Profile
Yves Giroux
2021-03-18 11:42
I think that was a very good practice in the sense that it provided parliamentarians with a very good idea of how quickly the pandemic was evolving and how the impacts on Canadians were being felt. It provided the committee members, as well as parliamentarians and Canadians, with an idea of how many people were using these benefits. In that sense, it was a very welcome transparency initiative. I personally was hoping it would continue after prorogation because of the value of the information it represented, certainly for me and my office as well as many stakeholders.
View Annie Koutrakis Profile
Lib. (QC)
View Annie Koutrakis Profile
2021-03-18 11:43
I'm sure the Department of Finance will hear that. Perhaps we could put that in place once again until the budget is in place.
The fall economic statement provides a fiscal outlook for the course of five years, as well as alternative economic scenarios should a more extreme resurgence of COVID-19 arise. Can you comment on the value of providing these five-year projections to parliamentarians?
Yves Giroux
View Yves Giroux Profile
Yves Giroux
2021-03-18 11:43
Of course.
A five-year planning horizon is very welcome. It provides an idea also as to what the future would look like. The fall economic statement did not include all of the policy initiatives the government plans on implementing—by definition, a fall economic statement is a partial picture. We saw it as a welcome addition to have a scenario where the pandemic would evolve differently from the central scenario. Again, that provided—not clarity, because it's providing alternative scenarios—a welcome addition regarding transparency with respect to the potential future path of government finances and the economy. In that sense, it's a development that I personally welcome and that the office also looks upon favourably.
View Gabriel Ste-Marie Profile
BQ (QC)
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Giroux, I want to make sure that I fully understood the discussion you just had with Ms. Koutrakis. You were actually talking about the bi-weekly updates on expenditure programs that the Department of Finance used to provide, correct?
I heard you correctly. So, after your testimony, about noon, I will introduce a motion that the committee make that request to the Department of Finance, in the hope that that will work.
You said that some details about the employment insurance operating account are missing. What details are those?
What should the government provide us in order to give us a complete picture?
Yves Giroux
View Yves Giroux Profile
Yves Giroux
2021-03-18 11:45
Thank you, Mr. Ste-Marie.
The Fall Economic Statement 2020 mentioned the employment insurance operating account, but it did not give a very clear picture of the way it has evolved in the current economic situation, given that benefits have been expanded and extended. Clearly, we are expecting the employment insurance operating account to incur huge deficits, which is to be expected in the current economic situation.
The government also committed to freeze the employment insurance premium rates at $1.58 per $100 of insurable earnings, at least until the end of 2022. However, the government makes no mention, either in the update or in general, of what will happen afterwards. It does not actually say how the very significant deficit of $52 billion in the employment insurance operating account will be eliminated over the five-year period.
Current legislation limits the annual increases in the premium rates. However, even if the premiums were increased to the maximum allowed by the legislation, the deficit in the employment insurance operating account would probably be about $52 billion. There is a lack of clarity over what will happen with this very significant deficit. We hope that the budget will provide more details about it, because it's clearly a colossal deficit for the employment insurance operating account.
If we maintain the status quo, that is, if we apply the legislation as it presently stands, the employment insurance premium rate will increase by $0.30, going to $1.80 per $100 of insurable earnings in the next three or four years.
Results: 136 - 150 of 459 | Page: 10 of 31

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