Thank you.
Thank you to all of the witnesses for being here today.
Mr. Giroux, I'll start with you or Mr. Jacques. Either of you can probably deal with this.
We heard from other witnesses today on some specifics, For example, BlackBerry received money from the federal government towards subsidy of a larger program that they put capital into. The argument was that, in the work plan or the application that was put forward, there would be jobs retained or added. It strikes me that this would be difficult to determine because the private sector had already put money into the project. Which was responsible for which? Did it really add that much value?
I get to Mr. Julian's point of view on a study of the use of public dollars towards these sorts of events. The list of departments within the government that are in the business of handing out money for a variety of different programs is enormous. I went through it in preparation for this meeting, and I was shocked by the depth of it.
Within the study, would there be the opportunity to look at...? We could look at the efficiency of those programs, whether there were jobs created or whether the loans were repaid and the efficiency of that.
I want to come back to my colleague's observation. Would there be a way to study if that capital was made available to the private sector through a reduction in taxes or a reduction in burden and the potential job creation of having that money back in the economy rather than picking companies or picking sectors? It strikes me as incredibly dangerous. We have a lot of small businesses that do not partake in any types of subsidies. They're just trying to make a living, and without having measurables or being able to figure out the efficiency of these programs, perhaps we'd be better off just coming up with a tax strategy that creates investment and brings investment in.
Do you have any comments on that?