Finance committee  You are the decision-makers, so the final decision is up to you. We make recommendations to the best of our knowledge. Theoretically, we have fewer constraints with respect to difficulties. We consider things in an ideal world, on occasion, but the fact remains that we put forth

Finance committee  That is a change that can be made much more quickly than in areas of research and development and human capital, like education. Changes in those areas take about 20 years. We cannot expect our people to be better trained and more productive overnight. That is accomplished in the

Finance committee  No, because we are doing the same thing as other countries, even if we are not perhaps doing it as well. I emphasized investment and equipment, because that is where we are not doing as well. However, if we wanted to pat ourselves on the back today, we could talk about research a

Finance committee  I think I understand. The new tax-free savings account, the TFSA, does allow contributions in kind. However, there is a deemed disposition before the contribution in kind goes into the tax-free savings account. So there is a gain immediately before, as is currently the case with

Finance committee  And it should go to reducing the income tax. I am not getting political. Someone was elected by promising to cut the GST. Once he was elected, he did that. We must congratulate him for having kept his promises, even if it was not the best thing to do and even if there was no cons

Finance committee  First of all, I must point out that the index is not nirvana. It is not a major target to reach. It is there only to rebalance things somewhat.

Finance committee  It is a comparison. I have not done the calculations for Canada, but I did do them for Quebec, at both the federal and provincial level. To move closer to an index of one, there would perhaps need to be a three- or four-point increase in the sales tax. That would be the equivalen

Finance committee  It's between $25,000 and $60,000, I would say. For families with children, those earning between those two amounts really feel the crunch. For a person who is single, it's perhaps between $25,000 and $40,000. If your income is above that, the worst is over. But if you have childr

Finance committee  To be fair. We tell a single parent to make a little effort and to earn $5,000 more, and then we take away $3,800. I think that is a problem.

Finance committee  Those rates are relatively high and they are not good. I personally have to pay much lower rates because my income is much higher. When your family income is over $100,000, social programs are not relevant any more, because at that income level, no benefits are paid out. The Cana

Finance committee  The middle-class if often affected, but it is not just the federal government's fault, nor is it just the provinces' fault. It is a combined effect, that starts from a good cause: setting up programs that are not universal in order to make low-income earners a priority. When they

Finance committee  Perhaps I can add a few things. Indeed, we do not want to keep companies artificially alive or throw money out the window, especially when we are dealing with taxpayers' money, which is our money. We cannot do the investing for companies. But if we give them a tax credit or help

Finance committee  I did not suggest increasing the GST to boost productivity. Productivity is not the only factor. There are also research and development, human capital and education. We talk about production per hour worked, and in that regard, investing in machinery is a significant factor. In

Finance committee  The consumption tax in France is based on the value added. Consequently, it does not affect business productivity. Their exports are not burdened by that heavy consumption tax. The tax is imposed on the value added, as is the case with the federal GST. That is also the case in th

Finance committee  We simply looked at changes in the number of manufacturing jobs by province between January 2005 and January 2008. In Canada overall, 280,000 jobs were lost. Very few were lost in Alberta, but aid was distributed per capita within the traditional sectors, and amounted to about 10