Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My remarks will be brief, but we want to say that the minister admitted to this committee that his department did no economic analysis of this measure before committing more than half a billion dollars of taxpayers' money. We've heard from experts who point out that this tax credit has a design flaw. There is a very strange marginal tax rate near the limit at which this credit comes in, so there is a perverse incentive for employers who are near this limit to fire workers or reduce their hours or to not extend hours or to not give raises in order to qualify for the tax credit.
We've heard from the Parliamentary Budget Officer, who says that this so-called job credit will create only 800 jobs over two years at a cost of almost $700,000 per job. I can give you lots of examples of where we could create jobs for much less, so clearly this is not a very good job-creation measure.
There are better ways to spend more than half a billion dollars of taxpayers' money. There are other tax measures or investments that can do more to strengthen the economy, to create jobs, and to provide taxpayers with a better bang for their buck.