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Results: 1 - 15 of 77
View James Cumming Profile
CPC (AB)
It's good to see you again, Mr. Chair. Thank you to all of the witnesses today.
I want to start off with Mr. Jelley.
Mr. Jelley, I have enormous empathy and respect for you as an entrepreneur and the crisis you're working through with those losses through what has been a very active business.
I want to talk to you about a couple of things. Is it not time that we looked at these supports with more of a risk analysis and a targeting...? Obviously, the government can't carry on these levels of support across the board. It's just not sustainable.
Would you not agree that we should now do a better risk analysis and have actual targeted supports?
View Tamara Jansen Profile
CPC (BC)
Absolutely.
Now I'm going to shift over to Ms. Clemence.
When I heard the Prime Minister talk about a one-dose summer, my heart broke because I recognized the tourism industry was absolutely hooped by that sort of talking point. I wonder if you could talk a little more about the challenges. I know the Tourism Industry Association of Canada has been saying over and over again that these supports they've been getting shouldn't stop until the government stops telling people to stay home.
I wonder if you could talk about that.
View Ed Fast Profile
CPC (BC)
View Ed Fast Profile
2021-05-18 12:38
Yes. I'll direct it to Ms. Clemence because Mr. Jelley has been doing a lot of the answering.
There have been persistent calls for the government to now pivot to targeted, sector-specific support for the most heavily impacted sectors of tourism and hospitality, and Mr. Jelley signalled that in his testimony earlier.
Could you tell this committee what targeted, sector-specific support for your sector should look like? Obviously, the enhanced CEWS program is part of that, but are there other elements that you would welcome?
View Peter Julian Profile
NDP (BC)
Thanks, Mr. Chair.
I have a question for Ms. Kennedy. The government is scaling back substantially on COVID support starting in a few weeks, and we're in the midst of a deadly third wave. Do you think the government is acting prematurely in cutting back all of those supports that people desperately need at a time when we are very much in danger?
View Tamara Jansen Profile
CPC (BC)
Thank you.
I didn't get an answer to that one, so regarding the business support loans, Dave would like to know why your programs make no differentiation between those who were seriously impacted and those who were not. He wants to know why small business owners like him who were shut completely down were treated the same as ones that were open.
Why didn't you better target compensation for those who were much more impacted?
View Pat Kelly Profile
CPC (AB)
Thank you.
When the minister appeared at committee to discuss the fall economic statement, she admitted there was nothing in the fall economic statement, or the Speech from the Throne, or any of the previous measures to assist small businesses that opened their doors in, say, late 2019 or the early months of 2020 and do not meet the criteria of the existing support measures.
Is there anything in this budget that would address this problem? This was something that has been widely acknowledged now by the government as a shortcoming in the support measures.
View Pat Kelly Profile
CPC (AB)
For the entrepreneur who has spent all of their life savings in 2019 to build a new restaurant with an opening date of March 15, 2020, there's really....
With all due respect, I think many of the programs you've described, or some of them, will decline those businesses, and for the same reasons they don't qualify for all of the existing programs. Is there really anything for a business such as I've described?
View Bernard Généreux Profile
CPC (QC)
You know that the Conservatives agree with this proposal. In fact, we are the ones who put it forward so that we only have one tax return, while maintaining jobs and minimizing the effects of this change, obviously.
As I told you, I am an entrepreneur. Like everyone else, we were affected by the pandemic when it started 14 months ago. One of the things that the government had to do was to put aside all of the EI administration to provide the CERB much more quickly, because the EI administrative system was not responding to the demands. In any case, it was impossible to be able to manage the CERB quickly using an absolutely archaic system.
On the other hand, I observed that the financial institutions that supported businesses with $40,000 loans—now $60,000—offered in collaboration with their government relations turned around quite quickly. They have certainly demonstrated that it was possible to do things much faster than normal, that is, when there was no crisis.
Have you seen the same thing with your businesses, not only with the $40,000 to $60,000 loans, but also with the whole Emergency Wage Subsidy and other programs?
View Peter Fragiskatos Profile
Lib. (ON)
Thank you very much. It's an interesting point.
Economically, this downturn has taken a different form. It's fair to say that it is not quite like economic downturns of the past and therefore requires some creative thinking and pointing towards anything that will boost productivity and competitiveness. We've just given some examples here. I'm sure we could list many more. Your point is well taken.
Mr. Hemmings, I remember about a year or a year and a half ago, when the emergency programs were being put in place and being refined, some of my friends in the opposition and some in the media were saying that the government was doing too much and that the government should hold back. They were more or less making an argument for austerity, in many ways, although they did not use the word.
I wonder what your thoughts would be if we just imagined for a moment that the federal government did not introduce emergency programs or if they had been much more restrained in nature. The programs that have been introduced have been generous and have held up the Canadian economy, in my view. We've heard that same view articulated here from experts who have testified in recent weeks and months.
What is your view? If the Canadian government had not put in place the various emergency programs, where would the country be right now?
View Sean Fraser Profile
Lib. (NS)
View Sean Fraser Profile
2021-04-13 18:16
My question is for Ms. Drigola.
I love it when witnesses start by saying “the one thing you can do” and then tell us what the one thing we can do is, which is to keep emergency programs in place.
Mr. Stratton referred to the phenomenon of economic scarring, which has been front of mind for us from the very beginning. I'm curious as to whether you can offer perspective into what kind of economic landscape we might have been dealing with, had the government not intervened to put forward measures such as the wage subsidy, such as CEBA and such as CERB in some instances, at the outset of this pandemic.
What would the world we're living in look like in the absence of those benefits?
View Julie Dzerowicz Profile
Lib. (ON)
Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank all the presenters for their very thoughtful presentations.
Mr. Macdonald, I'm going to start with you. I love it when people start off with numbers. It's always helpful to have the latest, so thank you for that. You are a true economist.
You mentioned 92% of every dollar to combat COVID-19 comes from the federal government. We have heard quite a bit of commentary from some of our opposition colleagues that we spent too much money on our emergency programs and that the supports we have implemented have caused us to go into massive debt.
We all know we have very few options to actually fund these types of programs, so we're going to have to increase our debt, raise taxes or cut crucial programs. In your opinion, how should the federal government have financed this emergency and extra spending?
View Julie Dzerowicz Profile
Lib. (ON)
Maybe the other question...and I didn't mean to ask this, but I think it was just a comment Mr. Cross made at the end of one of his answers. I think there was a real attempt on the part of our government to make sure that our emergency programs really supported right across the income spectrum. I know a recent Stats Canada report indicated that households in the lowest income quintile increased their share of disposable income from 6.1% in the first quarter to as high as 7.2% in the second quarter of 2020, while those in the highest income quintile decreased their share of disposable income from 40.1% to 37.7% over the same period of time.
Would that give an indication that our emergency programs have been helpful and have worked particularly for those on the lower end of the income scale?
View Peter Fragiskatos Profile
Lib. (ON)
Point taken, but by invoking him, I think you raise someone who's quite relevant and whose thoughts and ideas are quite relevant, specifically with regard to some of the matters that we're discussing at the committee today.
I know you have issues with government spending, and that's fair to raise, but in the context of COVID-19, I wonder what else government could have done.
For example, have you had a chance to read the recent report of the International Monetary Fund, the IMF, that focused specifically on Canada? It was released this month, so it's very recent. If you haven't had a chance to look at it, that's quite understandable.
It did say that if emergency programs such as the wage subsidy and the Canada emergency business account—which is, of course, the loan that now goes up to $60,000 for small businesses—the rent subsidy support, and many other examples that have been introduced, which admittedly are expensive, but have helped to sustain the country.... That's not just political spin here; that is the reflection of the IMF as well. It found, in this report, that unemployment would have risen by 3.2% beyond what we saw last April, which was 13% unemployment in Canada. It could have been even worse. As far as economic output goes, we would have seen, according to the IMF, a decline of 8% beyond what we saw in terms of the GDP decline.
What do you make of this? Absent the introduction of emergency programs, we would have had an enormously difficult time in Canada. We just heard from the Parliamentary Budget Officer, for example, who made clear to this committee that if emergency programs had not been introduced, Canada would have seen a situation of—he didn't use the term, but I think he might as well have—a depression.
What do you make of these things?
View Julie Dzerowicz Profile
Lib. (ON)
Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.
My question will be directed to Mr. Robson, but first I want to make sure that something else is on the record around the budget. I don't want Canadians who might be listening to think that there's been a deliberate attempt by our government to not be transparent or accountable. Last year we actually announced a budget date. That was Monday, March 30. We didn't follow through with it, because there was a massive pandemic, and that had to be sidelined.
I also want to remind everyone that we did have reports every two weeks, once we started up with the finance committee, to make sure we were transparent and accountable with our spending. It took part right up until the end of August, when we prorogued. When we came back into session, then we were accountable through our Parliament. There also is an intention to be presenting a budget. I don't want people to think that's not coming—it is—or that we haven't been accountable and transparent.
Mr. Robson, in your opinion, how should the federal government have spent or financed emergency and economic restart programs? We have heard time and time again from many economists that if we hadn't spent what we did, our economy would have been much worse. We also have really good data to show that we're actually doing fairly well, considering. When we look at our labour participation rates, we are doing better than Germany, the U.S. and Japan. When we look at the fourth quarter of Canada's GDP growth, we grew more than the U.K., the U.S., Germany, France and Italy.
If you are worried about our debt levels, how would you have done things differently?
View Philip Lawrence Profile
CPC (ON)
I apologize. I have a limited amount of time and, as I said, I do appreciate all your efforts.
I realize there will be idiosyncrasies in how we all measure things a little bit differently, but overall there's a pretty clear picture that emerges that we have higher unemployment than the G7 average, than most of the countries in the G7, than a lot of the countries in the G20, and higher unemployment than the average across the European Union. I think addressing those to specific idiosyncrasies probably isn't fair. I also think that our expenditures, it's pretty clear, are amongst the highest in the developed world as well.
What has happened is that, while other countries are getting paycheques, we are putting it on the credit card. I think that's pretty fair to say.
If you have any dispute with that, please share.
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