Industry committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It's nice to be back to speak to the committee again. I'm always happy to do what I can. My presentation is really in four different parts. For part of it, I have a bit of data and some charts on the recent performance of the manufacturing ind

Industry committee  Yes, this is the last point. On oil prices and energy prices, if oil prices go up $10 and they just stay there for the next couple of years, what happens to the Canadian economy? Well, the answer is that if natural gas prices go up proportionately with oil, and if investment ge

Industry committee  Sure. Thank you. Let me respond to a couple of points you made at the beginning about the adaptiveness. I'd just emphasize that a lot of companies have done a better job of adapting in terms of their output and their profitability, and part of that adaptation has involved layoff

Industry committee  You can quote him. He said he wanted a tax cut you can see. It's in people's faces all the time, every day. They can see it and they appreciate it, I'm sure. That's what he said. As for the contingency reserve you mentioned, I am much less troubled than I think you probably are.

Industry committee  Okay.

Industry committee  Thank you. Let me start from the beginning, then, and make it very clear. Yes, I can appreciate people's decision to move as an economic, social, cultural decision and everything else. I guess the point here, from the point of view of the policies that I would recommend...I'm

Industry committee  Yes, okay. Let me go on to your other points. With regard to the natural gas industry, the impact of higher prices of natural gas on the Canadian dollar is more important because we have much higher exports of natural gas. In terms of the impact on the economy, it's also very po

Industry committee  Okay, first I'll go over here and say yes, I remember well when I did work in the Department of Industry and we had to struggle. What do you do when the name of the game internationally is subsidization, as it is in autos and aerospace? It's really a tough issue. Obviously every

Industry committee  On EI, I'm in the process of looking at that issue. It appears to be because we have had good mobility out of Saskatchewan, I don't think the case can be made that the general existence and generosity in policies of the Canadian EI program are a really serious barrier to mobility

Industry committee  No problem. So what else can I say? There are, I guess, two things I should say. There still was $10 billion in tax relief, and that's a pretty big number relative to what we've seen from 1993 right up until the economic statement of last year. That's a lot of tax relief relat

Industry committee  Well, thank you very much.

Finance committee  Thank you for inviting me. Bonjour. What I'm going to do is identify some of the specific tax changes that I think you'll be hearing about this afternoon and why I think they may be included in the package and what their impact on the economy might be. I think you're going to s

Finance committee  That's fine.

Finance committee  Yes, thank you. I pretty much am in agreement with Don. It does have to be a blend. On the tax side, the key thing is that marginal effective tax rate on investment. Trying to line up depreciation rates with useful life is really critical. The reductions in the corporate income

Finance committee  I would be really leery about tax reductions for specific sectors. I'd have to think more before I would jump with enthusiasm on that one.