Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. As you know, the government set out a debt-to-GDP target. That was something I think the Prime Minister announced at the G-20 a couple of years ago. My understanding is—

Finance committee  I'm afraid I don't have a good answer on that. I think at the end of the day how the government uses the surpluses ultimately comes from a judgment about priorities. I've talked about capital gains taxes and personal income taxes today, but I'm sure there'll be other people aroun

Finance committee  Thank you. Very briefly, Mr. Chair, what the highest priority ought to be is obviously going to govern the committee's work throughout the hearings. I spoke today about capital gains tax relief, because I really do think that in terms of a bang for your buck, this could be a lo

Finance committee  Mr. Chair, I may not be the best placed person to answer a question on this. I know that we've seen some progress, particularly with the TILMA in Western Canada, which is really getting at problems around occupational licensing, for instance. But I will defer to one of my other c

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would say that the first order of business is, as Mr. Page says, to maintain spending discipline, as the type of spending growth that we saw from about 2003 to 2011-12, I think, is something that we want to avoid returning to. Secondly, I think there is

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. This committee has heard a number of times about financing constraints, particularly for new and expanding firms. Organizations such as the Investment Industry Association of Canada have been here, I know, talking about a decline in venture capital financi

Finance committee  Well, I want to be transparent. As I said, the work that Finance has done on the marginal efficiency of the capital gains tax shows that a reduction, or an increase, to put it differently, of the capital gains has a bigger economic impact than a reduction of, say, a consumption t

Finance committee  That's right, Mr. Chair. I think to the credit of everyone around the table, this is something that we've been grappling with: how do we deal with this financing issue? There have been experiments with tax credits. There have been experiments with direct subsidies. A budget a c

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think it's something the committee ought to look at. The last change to the capital gains tax rate took place in 2000—again in the context of a debate about how to use budgetary surpluses. So moving incrementally, or even as I mentioned in my remarks the

Finance committee  Mr. Chair, I'll address that question, but my colleague, Mr. Cross, may also want to do so because I think Mr. Keddy may be referring in part to some work that Mr. Cross has done for the institute. The only thing I would say directly to that is that I know that various proposals

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Thomas referred earlier to the wonky economic debate about the marginal efficiency of different types of taxes. The most costly according to most analysis, including analysis done by the Department of Finance, is capital taxes. A dollar of capital gains

Finance committee  Mr. Chair, the only thing I would say to Mr. Page's comments is that we're seeing at the provincial level the separation of the operating and capital budgets. I understand the case for separating them for the purposes of these types of spending decisions. But we've seen in the ca

Finance committee  We'll see how the program rolls out. I think an important part of the renewed Building Canada fund was the recapitalization of Public-Private Partnerships Canada. Delivering infrastructure spending through the P3 model I think has some real value, and I think that was an importan

Finance committee  Yes. I can say that in my experience, Mr. Cullen, the committee's report and ultimate recommendations are a major input into the budget process. The Department of Finance is responsible, as a conduit to stakeholders, to compile a list of submissions from stakeholders, ranging acr

Finance committee  Thanks, Mr. Chair. Thanks to all of you for the opportunity to appear as part of your annual pre-budget consultations. I want to begin by recognizing how important the committee's pre-budget work is. I've been involved in four federal budgets in the past, and I know the extent