Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to thank our witnesses for their opening statements. They were all very interesting.
Mr. Gray, I wanted to touch base on your statement. You said that Canada's “competitiveness is slipping”. In your submission, it says that “our international competitors continue to outpace us”. I have to say that I agree with you completely.
For example, Robert Asselin was here last week, sounding the alarm bell around the fact that interest rates are outpacing economic growth and that government spending, particularly on social programs that people rely on very much, is not sustainable.
Stats Canada just this week indicated that Canada is slipping into a technical recession. We had the governor of the Bank of Canada at this committee just a couple of days ago. He cautioned the government that its spending is not very helpful.
Interestingly, the BDC just issued a report saying that there are 100,000 fewer entrepreneurs in this country than there were 20 years ago. That is basically a 12% reduction in entrepreneurs.
The OECD published a chart recently on the “fear of failure”. It says, “As it turns out, Canadians now lead all G7 countries in citing 'fear of failure' as a roadblock to being an entrepreneur, according to the OECD, having moved up from fifth spot five years ago.”
That's higher than Britain, Japan, Italy, France, the U.S. and Germany.
I was reminded when I read this about the writer Paul Wells, who said something recently that I thought was quite apt. He said that in Canada, “if you run a successful business, you are made to feel you have done something wrong.”
I have to say, Mr. Gray, that in the context of everything that's going on, I could only characterize this government's management of the economy as nothing short of economic malpractice.
Would you agree?