Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Welcome to our witnesses.
I have a couple of questions for Mr. Golightly.
We had introduced, for a period of time, the home renovation tax credit. You mentioned in your comments that you thought it had minimum fiscal cost to the government.
I just want to break down a little bit three points that you made. One was to protect affordability for new residential construction. Second was to tackle the underground economy in home renovation. The third was to support skilled trades development and to advance innovation in housing.
My question is this. Would the former home renovation tax credit not work towards serving all four of those asks? Number one, you would bring your underground economy contractors, of which there is an untold number.... I couldn't guess. I'm going to ask you for a number, so you can come up with it. But however many there are out there, it would force them into the skilled trades, because a lot of them would have unskilled...or maybe good carpenters, but not skilled carpenters working for them, and certainly not journeymen carpenters working. It would also help, on the third point, to advance innovation in housing, because these guys aren't watching what's current; they're not advancing the trade.
I'll stop there to give you time to answer.