Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.
Thanks to everyone for their excellent presentations.
My question is directed to the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.
Mr. Stratton, last week in The Globe and Mail business section, there was an article that started as follows:
Canada’s beleaguered economy has an $80-billion-a-year stimulus injection sitting right in front of it, and it won’t cost its governments a penny to pick it up. They won’t have to raise taxes...for it. They’ll actually make money from it—lots of it.
What would it take?
“One weekend,” former Bank of Canada governor Stephen Poloz told an online forum last week.
It would have to be a heck of a weekend. Removing Canada’s largely indefensible barriers to interprovincial trade would require a rare collective political goodwill among provincial premiers, and serious leadership from Ottawa.
My question to you, Mr. Stratton, is, should eliminating interprovincial trade barriers be an urgent and immediate priority for our federal government and a key part of Canada's economic recovery plan?