Finance committee  I said personally, yes, and corporately, yes. And that's the third time I'm saying the same thing now, sir.

Finance committee  I've offered you my answer three times.

Finance committee  Yes, sir.

Finance committee  Any time you take a non-refundable tax credit and turn it into something refundable, it means you extend the reach of the benefit of whatever the government envisioned to offer people. Clearly, by offering more cash to people further down the income spectrum, you have an opportunity to close that gap.

Finance committee  It's all in the design. The working income tax benefit is not unlike a wage supplement. For a government and for many analysts who wish to see the labour market functioning without supports from the government, it would be actually better to make sure that you are not actively intervening in market forces, for example, actually pouring hundreds of thousands of temporary foreign workers into the bottom end of the wage pool, therefore actually suppressing wage growth at the bottom end.

Finance committee  We were established in 1980 to provide research analysis. We're funded by 12,000 individual and organizational members today to do the same thing that we've always done: economic social justice.

Finance committee  Yes, thank you.

Finance committee  I think the problem has been raised before by, as I pointed out, our Prime Minister when he was just a member of Parliament. If you throw too many things in one bucket, you can't really take a look at the different measures, some of which are fundamental policy initiatives. I mentioned three of them.

Finance committee  I support any government that recognizes its mistakes and corrects them. I think there is room for this budget to do what every budget has done because you wouldn't be the first government that had made a mistake in drafting that was discovered, often through the process of scrutiny in clause-by-clause, sometimes through the chamber of sober second thought, and sometimes not until things were implemented.

Finance committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. First of all, I'll give an introduction and a context for my comments. Thank you very much for the invitation to appear before the committee, as members of Parliament review the second budget implementation bill for the 2013 budget. It's a particular honour to be able to appear as a witness since this committee, I understand, will be restricted to hearing only seven hours of witness testimony in addition to what you just heard from the minister over only two days of hearings.

Finance committee  I will cede my time so that we can move along.

Finance committee  I'm sure it has been viewed as very positive, because there's a general culture out there that says taxes are a burden and we shouldn't pay them. Anything you can do that communicates to people that you don't have to pay taxes seems to be a winner, which is what you guys campaign on.

Finance committee  Can I just—

Finance committee  The Library of Parliament in 2006 released a document, presumably at the request of the government because you were interested in these measures, showing that the distribution of benefits from these two measures combined.... Well, the income splitting was divided between seniors and young families.

Finance committee  Good middle-class jobs can come from anywhere. Around the world, whether you're talking about IT, high-technology information jobs or resource-based industries, we see that it depends on how you treat the environment for labour relations. Canada has been pursuing a low-wage strategy for several decades now.