Government Operations committee  That's an excellent question. I'm going to answer it indirectly. Well, first off, I'll answer it very directly: I don't know. The case studies in the peer-reviewed literature are typically of much larger P3s: $100 million, $500 million, and a billion and up. To respond to an ear

Government Operations committee  I'll be very quick. I want to address both the macro and micro, because I understand where you're going. I just want to reference the book that so influenced former President Clinton, Reinventing Government, which states that the role of government is to steer, not to row. To g

Government Operations committee  Not exactly: I'm arguing that the political interests of members of Parliament, who are of course elected to represent their constituencies—their citizens, their voters—may express views that contradict the professionals. There are a lot of people, as we all know, who don't hav

Government Operations committee  Thank you for inviting me. I apologize for being late. I was at Centre Block. I thought the meeting was in Room 237 at Centre Block. Before I go into my slides, I want to give you a quick preamble. I'm a former mortgage manager and lender for the Bank of Montreal. In the 1970s a

Government Operations committee  Notwithstanding this appalling failure, I will argue that this failed P3 was due to poor decision-making by elected officials, and that does not invalidate P3s. Paradoxically, I will argue today that this failure validates my central or core thesis today: why P3s are an important

Finance committee  The biggest risk is that right now, the liability of the Government of Canada for CMHC is just under $600 billion, which is about one-third of Canada's GDP. That's an enormous amount of money, and that's an enormous liability. I'm not suggesting that it's going to fructify. But t

Finance committee  I was a candidate once in my life, in the 1993 election in Ottawa Centre against the late Marion Dewar, former mayor of Ottawa, and Mac Harb. I lost decisively and I did not challenge the results.

Finance committee  That was the Progressive Conservative Party, that's right.

Finance committee  That's the kind of thing I am talking about when I say we need to identify gaps, needs, or deficiencies in Canada. Then we use public policy to address those needs. I can't see any other function of the immigration policy. It's not to “save the world”. The United Nations does tha

Finance committee  I think it's extremely appropriate, actually. I actually argued in an op-ed that it should go to 70—not 67—with a provision for those who are in very physically challenging jobs or an exception clause that will allow that. More and more of us are in services. Even though the fi

Finance committee  I am not a member, nor do I contribute to any political party.

Finance committee  I haven't looked into the details, but you are asking more of a policy-level question. You and the members of Parliament are elected by the citizens of Canada, not by the citizens of some other country around the world. They have their own parliaments and their own representative

Finance committee  It's based on the needs of the Canadian economy in order to make us more competitive, so we can maintain a high standard of living, so that we can continue to afford our social programs and universities and so forth.

Finance committee  I'll start with free trade. I'm much more familiar with that. I've been teaching and researching free trade for, literally, 25 years. I'm absolutely mystified by people who don't, after this time, understand the importance of trade to well-being and standard of living. This has

Finance committee  Just by way of answering your question, I only use data that I call “official” data, from OECD, IMF, StatsCan, the U.S. Census Bureau. I'll be very blunt. I don't trust data from NGOs or unions or professors or corporations or politicians.