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Results: 31 - 45 of 1884
View Gabriel Ste-Marie Profile
BQ (QC)
It's really sad to hear that. It should be considered an essential service.
To your knowledge, have any concrete projects been proposed? You talked about the possibility of connecting communities to the Internet through fibre optics. That's what it should be. Otherwise, it could be done using the new technology being announced with low earth orbit satellites, which are more numerous than conventional satellites.
To your knowledge, are there any such projects in the works, with the potential of changing things quickly over the next few months?
Lynn Napier
View Lynn Napier Profile
Lynn Napier
2020-12-11 13:42
I want to clarify what I said earlier. Ten of our communities are satellite communities. I believe Northwestel is working on service to some communities, but I'm not sure that those would affect the current satellite communities. I'm not sure what is to be done in the next couple of months. I don't have that information with me right now.
Additionally, we have the two parts of telecommunications. One would be the Internet fibre optics, and the other is cell service. Both are in need of upgrades. We require accessibility in the north. Just when travelling, there are long distances where there's no cell service between communities, and that has a negative impact. In the past three weeks, I've seen medical incidents or accidents on the highways that could have had a quicker response had there been cell service available for those people.
View Gabriel Ste-Marie Profile
BQ (QC)
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for your answer. Hopefully, this will be resolved as soon as possible. I also clearly heard your request to raise gas taxes. The advantage is that it can be implemented immediately for infrastructure. That model works.
Could you give us a few concrete examples of another issue you mentioned, climate change? You said that you are already seeing it where you live. You have named categories, but can you give us some concrete examples?
Lynn Napier
View Lynn Napier Profile
Lynn Napier
2020-12-11 13:44
I can talk about the riverbank in my own community. It has been sliding, and we had a major slide 50 years ago. Because of the impacts of climate change, with permafrost across the north and rising water levels, we are seeing, in communities like Tuktoyaktuk, the water advance into the community. Buildings have had to be pulled back from the shoreline.
This year, the water levels have been “unprecedented”, which is the word for 2020. I think the Great Slave Lake, which is one of the largest lakes in Canada, was five feet higher than normal. The Mackenzie River and the Slave River were high too. A lot of our communities are on the rivers—the Hay River, the Mackenzie River and the Slave River—and on the lakes, and these levels are affecting our community infrastructure, our water intake and our sewer systems. I think there's not any community that is unaffected by climate change in the Northwest Territories.
View Peter Julian Profile
NDP (BC)
Thank very much, Mr. Chair, and thanks to all of our witnesses for being here today. We certainly hope that you and your loved ones have been safe and healthy during this pandemic.
I'd like to start with you, Mayor Napier. I'd love to give a shout-out to two residents of Fort Smith: my former roommate Dennis Bevington and Joan Bevington. Next time you see them in Fort Smith, if you could say hi, I'd appreciate it.
You've spoken very eloquently about climate change, the lack of connectivity and the lack of housing. This week, of course, the Parliamentary Budget Officer revised his estimate of the cost of the Trans Mountain pipeline. Construction costs, now revised, will most probably be $14 billion. Of course, we know that Canadian taxpayers will lose a lot of money on that, which is another conclusion of the PBO report. This is the choice the government can make: to invest in Trans Mountain or make the investments that are actually going to resolve many of the issues you're raising.
I'd like to get a sense from you, with the Northwest Territories Association of Communities, of how much you think it would cost to meet the response on clean energy to make sure the Northwest Territories and northern communities are actually part of the clean energy grid and have those options available to them. How much would it cost to meet housing requirements and address the housing shortage in the north, particularly in the NWT? For telecommunications to get communities interconnected, are there any costs?
I'd like to get a sense of what it would take to resolve those issues in the north.
Lynn Napier
View Lynn Napier Profile
Lynn Napier
2020-12-11 13:48
Thank you, Mr. Julian.
I will certainly say hi to Mr. Bevington. He comes to our “lunch with the mayor” meetings every month.
I'm sorry that I don't have the costs of what that would be. Certainly it is far less than $14 billion.
We know that housing across the territory is dire. We have a lot of what we call “hidden homeless”, where people are not homeless in the same circumstances as you would see in the south. We have overcrowding of housing units at an extreme level.
Just as we've seen in Nunavut in the past month, if we have an outbreak of COVID, it will spread because of the interconnectedness of the communities. We don't have the same medical services you have down south—which, again, are already over-taxed for the people who are being serviced.
The dire state of housing inadequacy and the deficit of housing supply in the Northwest Territories will require an extraordinary allocation of federal funds to overcome. A long-term federal funding commitment is critical to address the unmet housing needs.
I am very sorry that I don't have numbers for you today. We can certainly look into that and get something to the committee as best we can.
View Peter Julian Profile
NDP (BC)
Thank you so much for your response.
I'm going to move to Mr. Wildeman. I'm very intrigued by your proposal around having fitness training as part of health care. You're certainly making a very strong argument for the positive impacts that would come from that.
Has the Fitness Industry Council done any statistical analysis to know how many Canadians might benefit in that kind of situation? How much would we save the health care system if Canadians were healthier?
Scott Wildeman
View Scott Wildeman Profile
Scott Wildeman
2020-12-11 13:50
That's a great question. We have done modelling. We've looked at, for example, expanding the Prescription to Get Active program over 10 years, leveraging not only federal government investment, but also the facilities. The Fitness Industry Council of Canada is made up of facilities from coast to coast, and those facilities would also fund the initiative.
We believe we can—in the long term, over the course of 10 years—provide savings to our health care system of well over $100 million. In terms of people getting started and continuing with their physical activity, we could get well over 250,000 Canadians who are not currently exercising and being active onto that path. That's where you'll see the health care savings.
View Peter Julian Profile
NDP (BC)
Thank you very much.
I have to move on to Mr. Stratton. I'm a long-time member of the New Westminster Chamber of Commerce and a proud member of the Burnaby Board of Trade.
What small business people raise consistently is that web giants and companies outside Canada are not paying any corporate tax at all. Is the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in favour of levelling the playing field and forcing the web giants to actually pay corporate taxation and pay their fair share in Canada?
Trevin Stratton
View Trevin Stratton Profile
Trevin Stratton
2020-12-11 13:51
We are certainly in favour of the digital sales tax that was just announced.
When it comes to corporate taxes, I think it's very important to understand that there is also an international conversation taking place at the OECD as part of the larger BEPS process for taxation where they're discussing this very issue of corporate taxation for digital technology companies.
Our position has always been that we need to defer to what is decided multilaterally and internationally, instead of going on our own and making a made-in-Canada approach and then having another international system that becomes the standard that we have to adapt to later on.
View Pierre Poilievre Profile
CPC (ON)
I think you'd like to lock me up and throw away the key, Mr. Chair.
The Chair: Not me.
Mr. Di Matteo, you're one of Canada's leading fiscal historians. The Bank of Canada has expanded its balance sheet by $400 billion [Technical difficulty—Editor] 400%. Has this ever happened before?
Livio Di Matteo
View Livio Di Matteo Profile
Livio Di Matteo
2020-12-11 13:53
That's a very good question. I guess my first answer is that I actually don't do monetary economic history.
The size of the increase is certainly outside of my living memory and my recollection of similar types of events, even during times of increases in public spending. The last time there was a major ramp-up of this nature—during World War II, for example—most of it was standard deficit financing in terms of Victory Bonds and actual purchases, as opposed to money creation and monetization.
View Pierre Poilievre Profile
CPC (ON)
Right. So even in defending western civilization against Hitler and Mussolini, our government actually raised its money by borrowing real dollars from real people rather than credit creation at the central bank.
Livio Di Matteo
View Livio Di Matteo Profile
Livio Di Matteo
2020-12-11 13:53
Well, at that time, that was the approach they used. I mean, with World War II, the debt was contracted at, I guess, what you would term “patriotically low” interest rates, given that it was the fight to save democracy. That, in a sense, assisted the process of borrowing, because the rates were quite low at that time.
View Pierre Poilievre Profile
CPC (ON)
Your research shows that the biggest deficits as a share of GDP in Canadian history happened in the mid part of the war, and those are the only deficits, as a share of the economy, that are bigger than those today. But your research also demonstrates that in 1946-47, we ran the biggest surpluses as a share of GDP in Canadian history, rapidly paying back that debt.
Do you see the current government on track to doing that after this crisis is over?
Results: 31 - 45 of 1884 | Page: 3 of 126

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