Thanks very much, Mr. Chair.
Thanks to all our witnesses for being here today and providing their very valuable testimony. We hope you and your families continue to stay safe during this pandemic. We're now in the second wave and, tragically, anticipating a third wave coming soon.
My first questions will be for Ms. MacEwen and Ms. Abou-Dib.
I want to ask you this because you both spoke about the issue of inequality and addressing inequalities in a meaningful way. We went through the Second World War and had a crisis that was similar in many ways, being both economic and social. At the same time, we had in place wealth and excess profit taxes.
The banks this week have announced massive profits, now clearing $40 billion and going towards $50 billion, during the pandemic, and they received $750 billion of liquidity support in the same period. That happened within days. We've seen Canada's billionaires increase their wealth by over $60 billion. The web giants, the largest corporations in Canada, don't pay taxes.
How important is this issue of dealing with tax fairness? How essential is that to putting in place the other measures you're both speaking to, which help to address the growing and obscene inequality in our country?
I'll start with Ms. MacEwen.