Finance committee  I think first of all that it's a fantastic track record to build on. Where I would begin is by looking at tariffs that have a very, very low effective rate. Again, I use the example of 0.08% for propylene copolymers. According to the WTO, there are a few dozen different tariffs w

Finance committee  Who owns it?

Finance committee  As a business owner, I'm a little biased on that, but I think it should be run like an insurance fund, that it should be owned by all Canadians.

Finance committee  Yes, exactly.

Finance committee  Yes.

Finance committee  I'm not a lawyer and specifically what I said was that my preference would be an overall reduction in EI.

Finance committee  No, they're both tax credits. Both of these involve paying EI to the government and then receiving a cheque at the end of the year based on your EI payments. This is not a reduction in payments. Corporations and their employees have to pay into these first and then receive a cheq

Finance committee  I wish you had asked me first, because I'm going to pass it along as well. I've not looked at that particular item and could not comment on it intelligently.

Finance committee  I think that's a fair comment. I think what's needed is, as my colleague suggested, to have a large analysis of the system as a whole and go through all of these things and see what has become out of date. I think it's analogous to the tariff code, where there are tariffs in th

Finance committee  I think it's a stronger benefit. Now, again, based on what I said earlier, my inkling is always to have fewer tax credits, period. But if you're going to have a tax credit, I think the Liberal plan has two advantages over the Conservative one. One, it's backward-looking, so it do

Finance committee  Thank you for that question. I have some grave concerns about how that system was set up. It wasn't really creating a family tax system as we see in other countries. Instead, it's taking the individual taxes that we have and sort of jury-rigging a family tax credit on top of tha

Finance committee  Normally, when you design a targeted tax credit for businesses, the eligibility requirements tend to be backward looking. They say that if you paid so much in tax or your earnings were a certain amount the year before, then you're eligible for this, and then what you do next year

Finance committee  I would fully agree with that. I think there's room to merge some of these plans, such as the HST rebate and the universal child care benefit, into a single cheque that's better targeted towards Canadians. I absolutely agree that this money could be packaged in a more sensible w

Finance committee  Yes.

Finance committee  Not particularly, no. If efficiency is defined as changing behaviour, there's not a lot of evidence that they do that.