Thanks very much, Mr. Chair.
Thanks to all our witnesses for being here. We certainly hope that you and your families are safe and healthy.
I'd like to direct my questions to Ms. MacEwen.
Ms. MacEwen, you're a breath of fresh air. Some people in Ottawa want to go back to the old normal where 50% of Canadian families struggled, within $200 of insolvency on any given month, the largest level of family debt load in the industrialized world. According to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, $26 billion in tax revenues are going offshore. Very wealthy and very profitable corporations can basically take their money offshore because of an extremely porous tax system.
I have three questions.
Your presentation, I thought, was brilliant. You talked about really putting the emphasis coming through and out of the pandemic on the health of Canadians and income supports. How important is that structure?
For my second question, we've seen a lot of profiteering during this crisis. The banks have $750 billion in liquidity support from the various federal government agencies. As you noted, support hasn't trickled down. I believe that with programs for corporate bailouts, they can apply to oversees tax havens. We see companies like Amazon that don't respect the health and safety of their employees getting contracts from this federal government. How important is it that we crack down on this type of profiteering?
Third, what do you think the public appetite is for these changes? We've seen record levels of support for wealth tax, for child care. In the same way that after the Second World War, Canadians finally said, "Enough is enough. We're going to start investing in people", to what extent do you think Canadians now are also ready for investments finally going to people for a change rather than to Bay Street?