Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Welcome, everyone, and thank you for your presentations.
There are two issues. The first is the labour supply that's available to organizations. Our labour demands are obviously not being met. Some of the comments were around the temporary foreign worker program and the LMIA process, of which I'm very aware in Ontario and which is very cumbersome, I would argue.
When you make a mistake, you sometimes have to start right from the beginning. It would be like going on a road trip, getting pulled over for something, and having to go all the way back home to start again. It doesn't really make sense. I feel for you there. That's something we're going to have to seriously take a look at.
I wish to speak to the Chamber of Commerce on some of their remarks. As an economist, as someone who has worked on Wall Street and Bay Street, I would argue that the best measure of a country's financial position is its net debt-to-GDP ratio. In Canada it's about 31%. It's trending lower. In fact, I'll read to you part of the Parliamentary Budget Officer's fiscal sustainability report from September 27, 2018.
Current fiscal policy at the federal level is sustainable over the long term. PBO estimates that the federal government could permanently increase spending or reduce taxes by 1.4 per cent of GDP ($29 billion in current dollars) while maintaining net debt at its current (2017) level of 31.1 per cent of GDP over the long term.
We have the lowest net debt-to-GDP ratio in all the G7 countries. We have an AAA credit rating, which has remained unchanged, thankfully.
The former Liberal administration of Paul Martin and Jean Chrétien fixed a number of things that needed to be fixed. I would argue that we are on the exact fiscal track that we need to be on, and our net debt-to-GDP ratio is declining. In fact, a lot of our fiscal gap is quite prudent. I'm going to stop there.
Blair, I have a quick question. There's one thing that you didn't bring up that I thought you'd bring up in terms of seniors planning, and that is the survivor benefit, the 60%. Someone passes away, and they are the spouse who is collecting CPP. Usually the male passes first, and he's the one collecting CPP. Many women haven't been in the labour force as long as men have, especially in that older generation. They're left much worse off, because they can only collect 60% of their spouse's benefit. I would, in fact, argue for a policy change to be implemented that would allow them to collect 100% of their spouse's benefit but maintain the cap at the current level of CPP, which is $1,100 and change. I believe I know what I am talking about there.
That would be another step toward eliminating seniors' poverty, especially among women seniors and single seniors. Is that correct?