Finance committee  Yes, we need to create investment opportunities for them. For example, I think about the regulatory approval process, where companies are looking to invest in Canadian electricity, the oil and gas sector and mining. When there's an overly cumbersome approvals process that's uncertain, especially now that we are uncertain as to what the Impact Assessment Act is going to look like, we need to improve certainty, and that's going to lead to more investment.

Finance committee  Since Jim agreed with some of what I said in the opening statements, and that was written in Hansard, which we should make sure to take a look at, I am going to say that I agree with something that Jim said, which we should take a look at it. It's the questions around labour shortages.

Finance committee  I think we also have to keep an eye out for potentially very expensive programs. We saw the start of the dental program. When you look at the way it is laid out, with its being a federally led program, it's enormously expensive. That's going to be very much overshadowed by a pharmacare program, especially if we see one that is fully single payer, paid by the government.

Finance committee  What we do at the C.D. Howe Institute is that we take a look out to the future. In what the government has been doing in their outlook for the future in terms of many decades out and what their projected debt-to-GDP ratio is, they have assumed that everything is going to be hunky-dory on the economy for the next couple of decades, but we all know that's not true.

Finance committee  I will definitely not nerd out on the efficiencies defence here. Bring me back for the bill review, if it comes to this committee, to get into that. The efficiencies defence applies economy-wide. Potential mergers could have taken advantage of it. There are a lot of views in terms of what to do with the efficiencies defence.

Finance committee  That's correct. At the time when those rebates were set up in the 1990s, about 90% of homes that were bought would have been below the minimum threshold at which the GST was clawed back, so for most homes at that point, buyers would have paid no GST. Now, it's the exact opposite.

Finance committee  Good morning. Thanks for having me here. In my role at the C.D. Howe Institute, Canada's leading economic policy think tank, I get to take back advice from parliamentarians on what we should focus on. I'll try to be very brief here to allow all the members to dig into our submission and to let us know what issues are most on their minds for us to work on.