Finance Committee on May 7th, 2024

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.

Just for the record, I want to say that I was on the previous list. Before Mr. Davies made his amendment, I was next on the list, but I then put my hand up again for this amendment, and I did come in after Monsieur Ste-Marie, so I was indeed second on the list.

I just want to say thank you so much. I always like hearing the wise wisdom of my colleague Monsieur Ste-Marie. I always like to hear his thoughts.

The first thing I'm going to say is that I very much agree with Mr. Davies' suggestion. I'm not sure how he did this. I think he was stealing all my notes, because just about all of his comments he was making were about everything I was going to mention, so we are very aligned.

I will say first that I appreciated Mr. Davies' looking at how many hours we used in considering the BIA last year as well as in 2022. Indeed, his proposal does keep us in line with that. I want to let Mr. Davies know that I'm very much in agreement with what he has proposed for the week of May 20.

I would say to you, regarding Monsieur Ste-Marie's comment, that there would then have to be a bit of an adjustment around possible amendments. I think that is something we have to think about as we move towards what the final schedule on this budget implementation act.

The second thing I will also indicate, and I'm glad Mr. Davies has brought this up, is that we do have only seven weeks left. We do have to pass the budget before the end of June, for all the outstanding reasons my colleagues Mr. Turnbull and Mr. Davies made in terms of the importance of various aspects of the bill. There are a number of things I could put on the table as well that are important to my riding, but I will leave it, as I pretty much agree 100% with both colleagues and their excellent lists.

I would also say that I would encourage us to try to reach some sort of consensus today. We do not want to lose the opportunity to hear from our Minister of Finance and our Deputy Prime Minister this Thursday. If I heard Mr. Turnbull correctly, she is available this Thursday. I tend to like to have our minister at the front end when we are considering the budget implementation act. It allows us the opportunity to ask some questions of her and get some of her thoughts before we continue asking more specific questions on each of the sections of the budget implementation act.

I agree with Mr. Davies. I think that Mr. Ste-Marie made some thoughtful comments about timelines for the amendments that I think we have to consider. I do know that we all appreciate that we have a timeline to getting this budget passed, and there are only so many weeks left. I would ask for all of my colleagues' consideration that we find a solution today to this, because we do want our Minister of Finance in on Thursday and we want to get going on this testimony. There are a lot of excellent sections to this budget implementation act. I know that I have a lot of questions that I really would like to delve into, so I hope we could reach some sort of agreement today.

Thanks so much, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Dzerowicz.

Now we'll go to MP Albas, please.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

I'll be very brief here.

On this particular omnibus piece of legislation, I'm very surprised that the NDP members have said that they want to see this process go so quickly. There are 50-plus divisions in here. The ways and means motion typically allows for the CRA to start acting as if the legislation has passed, so if there are any changes to tax laws within the BIA, those would already be considered implemented by the CRA.

From my scanning of the BIA.... I always stand to be corrected because I believe MP Davies.... Congratulations to him on becoming their finance critic, but I think that when we talk about how this bill allows for the budget to go through, that's not quite right.

The supply process is typically what funds the initiatives of the government, and quite honestly, the government can give money to whichever province it wants. That's something that it already has a clear area on, and those decisions are usually addressed through the estimates process.

If you look in the BIA itself, Mr. Chair, there are areas about giving $100-million authorities to those who regulate our banks. There are so many things—CMHC changes, changes to the Criminal Code, money laundering, etc. I really think this whole thing about how we have to get this all wrapped up by the end of June really denotes a sense that the government is dictating to Parliament, rather than the government coming before Parliament saying, “Here is what we would like to discuss.”

I know there will be a lot of other commentary and a lot of other issues. I just want to flag those things. Ultimately, the government will have, through the CRA, its tax authority. Most of the money that the government plans on spending—because that's really what I believe this government cares about—is already handled through the supply process.

For members to be conflating the two does a disservice to not only this particular committee; it also creates a little bit more of a wrong idea about what the budget implementation act is there to do and what it's not there to do, Mr. Chair.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Albas.

Are there any other speakers on the amendment?

It goes to a vote.

Mr. Hallan, is this on the amendment?

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

I just want to make sure I'm first on the list after the amendment vote.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Yes.

We'll go to a vote on the amendment.

(Amendment agreed to: yeas 11; nays 0 [See Minutes of Proceedings])

We are back to the main motion as amended.

I do have a speakers list. I have MP Hallan, MP Morantz and then MP Lawrence.

Go ahead, MP Hallan.

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

I'd like to address some of the comments that were made today, in particular one by Mr. Turnbull.

Usually in the past we've had negotiations outside of committee if things don't get resolved. In this case, there was no discussion. We were not reached out to whatsoever. I'm surprised to know that Mr. Davies actually got this amendment before all of us, and he admitted that.

It does bring up the question about this carbon tax coalition. It makes it more and more clear—to us, at least—that there is a coalition, not just in this committee, but outside.

I would like to propose an amendment to the motion as amended. Before I do that, I would like to say, in the spirit of collaboration on Bill C-59, that Mr. Davies' request was to get this passed as soon as possible. I will remind him that I ended up pulling my two amendments at the end so we could group the rest of the clauses. We passed the bill right away in that collaboration, which is why we got to this point.

We did help to pass his amendment. That's good. We should have some more witnesses.

I'd like to make an amendment. There are a few of them. I'd like to speak to them after I've given them.

In item ii, after May 23, I'd like to add the dates May 28 and May 30, 2024.

In item iii, I'd like to remove the date and put May 30, 2024.

In item iv, I'd like to change the first date to June 3, 2024, and strike everything after “resources on that day”.

In item v, after where it says “Bill C-69”, I would like to add “four meetings on its study of proceeds of crime and money laundering”. Strike everything before that and replace it with that, so “following the completion of the study of Bill C-69” strike out everything and add in "four meetings on its study of proceeds of crime and money laundering”.

I think we've distributed that, or we're going to distribute it. I believe it's been sent to you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

It can't be distributed because it's only in English. We do not have the translation.

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

I want to move it still. I'd like to speak to it, if that's okay, and in the meantime—

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

You're speaking to your amendment.

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

Yes, it's to my amendment.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

You can continue to speak to it, but it can't be distributed to the members without it being in both official languages.

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

Okay.

The reason I'd like to add these two dates, colleagues, is that I think we would like to have more witnesses come here. As it has been noted many times before, this is a 660-page budget. It's quite extensive. I think there is a will—I hope there's a will—in this room to be able to have more witnesses.

I think my friend Gabriel expressed this as well. He suggested a postponement of one week. I think we could agree. In that spirit, I added the two dates of the 28th and the 30th. Subsequently, that's why I moved the other dates forward. It's to accommodate that. It's because I fully agree with Mr. Ste-Marie on having one more week of witnesses.

It would shift those dates for amendments one week forward. On May 30, we could make the amendments, and the start of clause-by-clause consideration would be no later than June 3 at 12 p.m. Typically, as we know, opposition parties don't always agree to an end date, but we could definitely agree to start it then and there.

The one that's really important, I think, is this item iv that we want to amend.

We and the chair all received a letter from Chrystia Freeland, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, on October 6, 2023. It was her request. She needed assistance with the fourth five-year parliamentary review of the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act, so she requested this last year, in October. She also said that the last review was completed in November 2018.

At this point, this is a very important topic, and my colleague and friend Mr. Chambers also put a motion on notice with regard to this, because right now, just in the last few days.... It just goes to show how important this study is.

I'm going to read some headlines with regard to TD Bank: “TD probe tied to laundering drug money, says Wall Street Journal” and “TD Bank could face more severe penalties after drug money laundering allegations, says analyst. Bank could face worst-case scenario after report connects TD to illicit fentanyl profits”. These fines could hit up to $2 billion, says the article. Then “TD Bank hit with $9.2M penalty after failing to report suspicious transactions”.

This is all getting worse, and we know there's an opioid crisis, so it could possibly be tied in to that. We are also seeing things like extortion and car thefts, which could also be tied in to money laundering and the proceeds of crime that are taking place under this government. That's why I think it's more important than ever.

We never hear the Liberals or the NDP talking about how important this is, even though the finance minister has requested that this committee study it. My friend Adam Chambers talks about that all the time, and he's right. These headlines on TD are from just days ago. This is how serious this issue is.

If we're going to be planning, I think we need to add these into the amendment so that it gets passed. If we're all going to decide to keep, and we want to keep, this so-called “spirit of collaboration”—which I feel the Liberals and NDP have broken—I feel this could be a good compromise as well, because this is important for Canadians. The amount of extortion....

I actually visited the owner of a trucking company and I saw the video and heard the audio first-hand of someone who's trying to extort money out of him. They said, “We will shoot your house up next week.” They didn't comply. These people live in fear. The family had to separate and live in separate hotel rooms so they couldn't be seen together. The next video he showed me was of a car pulling up and shooting at his house. After that meeting, we went outside into the parking lot and he showed us his two cars, which had been fitted with bulletproof windows. This is the state of Canada after nine years of Justin Trudeau, with the help of the NDP.

This is what's happening. Common-sense Conservatives put forward a private member's bill from Tim Uppal, our deputy leader, who had to put forward a bill because this current government is not serious about crime. This soft-on-crime policy is the reason that things have gotten so bad in this country. He put a bill forward on extortion. If this government's not going to act, then we might as well, even before Pierre Poilievre becomes prime minister.

It just goes to show how bad a state this country is in after nine years. Many people left where they came from to come here for a safer future for them and their kids. Many immigrants risked it all and left everything behind to come here. When they come here, they get hit with high taxes and crime like we have never seen before—drugs, chaos, crime all over the place—and get hit with double the rent. We're hearing about international students living under bridges in tents, and nurses and teachers living in their cars, because after nine years of this Liberal-NDP government, housing costs have doubled. Immigrants leave everything to come here. They risk it all. Then they ask themselves, “What the hell did we leave our country for in the first place? It's even worse here.”

These are the kinds of comments we get when we talk to Canadians as we're travelling around the country. Every single place we go, we hear about these kinds of stories: “What did we do wrong? What did we do before? We were always heating our house. We were always filling up our gas. We would get groceries like anyone else. What is this carbon tax?” They had been doing things that they had always been doing; now they are being hit by a carbon tax that makes everything more expensive.

It just goes to show you that you can risk it all, leave it, and come here, but under this current government there's no way you can succeed. This budget does nothing to help those people either. It does absolutely nothing for them. In fact, it just raises their taxes, which this government is known to do no matter what.

That's why I think it's important that we have more witnesses. It's so that the government can clearly hear from people about their suffering. Obviously, they are not talking to their constituents. We might as well have more witnesses here so that they can hear from everyday Canadians about how bad their policies are and how negatively impactful they are to their lives.

I think it's very important that we follow up with what the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance has asked for as well, with the proceeds of crime and money laundering, and that we act on that right away so that more people don't have to face extortion. Under this current government, with the support of the NDP, they don't feel safe in this country anymore.

I gave one example of a family and a company that we visited. There are numerous others across the country that are facing the same thing. They are too scared to speak up, because they know that under this current government, nothing happens. You can literally commit a crime in the morning and, because of the failed policies under this government, the soft-on-crime policies, you can be off in the afternoon, commit another crime and be out again in the evening. There's no justice for people.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

MP Hallan, because some members have S. O. 31s, etc., we'll now suspend. We'll be back later in the afternoon.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

We're back.

MP Hallan last had the floor. Then I have MP Morantz and then MP Lawrence.

MP Hallan, you have the floor.

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

I see my friend Marty Morantz is next, so I will concede my time to him.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Go ahead, MP Morantz.

[Marty Morantz, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Given the fact that we had to suspend to go up to question period, I thought it would be appropriate to take some time to recap where we're at, for those watching.

Essentially, what happened earlier today was that a Liberal member proposed a motion—a programming motion, as we call them—to basically set out for the committee what we're going to be meeting on through to just before the summer. It was unfortunate, because that member never spoke to Conservative members on the committee to say that they were going to do this.

What was really surprising—because they talk a lot about working together and keep asking why we can't just all get along— was that what they did was kind of sneaky, Mr. Chair. They actually gave a copy of the motion to the NDP member of this committee last night. I know that because he told us. He had a chance to read it.

Obviously the Liberals must have been working on it for a while. They said that they wanted to make sure they had the votes to carry it, but instead of coming to us to see if we might support something like that or at least talk about what we're going to do for the next couple of months, they just went to their coalition partner and said to vote for this. He was happy to oblige them.

Just to recap, so that people who are watching understand, I think it would be appropriate to go through that motion.

Mr. Hallan proposed some amendments, so I'm going to try to capture the motion with those amendments.

It starts off with the sentence, “As relates to the committee's future business, it be agreed that”. The future business that they're talking about is the meetings that are going to take place over the next five or six weeks through to the end of June, when the House will rise for the summer.

Then it says, “i. the committee dedicate its meeting on Thursday, May 9th”—which is in just a couple of days—“to hearing from the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, and officials, on the subject matter study of Bill C-69”.

That clause seems reasonable on the face of it, but what's really sad about it is that it talks about meeting with officials. What I think folks watching need to understand is that we had 10 finance committee officials in this room this morning, sitting right here. I know that I was burning the midnight oil preparing my questions. Apparently the Liberals and Mr. Davies were burning the midnight oil cooking up a programming motion plot that has thrust this committee into a filibuster. It's really too bad. It's really unfortunate.

In any event, we had them here and I had questions. I had questions about the short-term rentals, about the journalism tax credit and about the so-called independent advisory board, which is a board that is appointed by the partisan Liberal cabinet. How independent could it possibly be?

I had a question about that, but I didn't get to ask it. Do you know why? Because the Liberals proposed a unilateral programming motion without consulting us, so here we are.

I had questions about the small business carbon rebate. For example, why is it only given to CCPCs? For those watching, I know we throw around a lot of acronyms at this committee. That stands for “Canadian-controlled private corporation”. This completely ignores sole proprietors and partnerships, which are apparently left out. At least, that's the question I wanted to ask to clarify, but I never got the chance to ask it because the Liberals decided to blow up the committee today.

It's really just a very unfortunate set of circumstances, Mr. Chair.

I wanted to ask about the underused housing tax credit. It's been in place for three years. I was curious as to whether or not anyone had paid the $10,000 fine that they're now backing off from. They're reducing it to $2,000. Do those people get their money back? I was going to ask that.

I wanted to ask about the $5,000 fine that individuals were getting for not meeting their filing requirements, which they're now backing off from as well. The underused housing tax is another file that has been messed up by the Liberals for sure.

I was going to ask a couple of other things. I was going to ask about the AMT—the alternative minimum tax—and about what they call “tax relief”. Only in Liberal land can a tax increase be tax relief, Mr. Chair. The excise tax went up by 2% and they cast it as tax relief. The mental gymnastics you have to go through to increase a tax and call it “tax relief” are amazing. It's quite astounding. I wanted to ask about that, but I didn't get the chance.

Here we are, then. It's “only” a 600-page bill, by the way, with 468 clauses. There is a lot of ground to cover. It's an omnibus bill, which is always problematic. There are things in there amending the Criminal Code. I don't know, but people might wonder why the Criminal Code is being amended at the finance committee. There are all kinds of things in there that really shouldn't be in a budget bill, but it's what the government does when they want to get everything, including the kitchen sink, through the House of Commons: They throw it into a budget bill.

That's how we wound up with the SNC-Lavalin scandal, by the way. People shouldn't forget. We need to remind them regularly. I know Mr. Erskine-Smith remembers very well that the clause to provide a deferred prosecution agreement was buried in a bill like this at the finance committee. What was it doing there? I don't know. The committee members probably didn't even know what it was doing there. Maybe someone asked a question about it. I wasn't elected then. No one thought there would be a clause put in a budget bill for the benefit of one single corporation. However, there was.

That's why it's important that we have the opportunity to ask questions about these bills. That's a question I asked last year and that I'd like to ask again. Is there a clause among these 468 clauses in this 659-page bill for the specific benefit of one company or one person? Again, I didn't get the chance to ask that question this morning.

That's part i of the motion. There is a lot to unpack there, but I'm going to move on to part ii.

Part ii says:

the committee dedicate its regular meetings on May 9th, 21st, and 23rd, [and with Mr. Hallan's amendment] 28th and 30th, 2024, to consideration of the subject matter study of Bill C-69, barring referral of the bill to committee; and that all evidence gathered as part of the pre-study be considered as evidence in the committee's full study of the bill, once referred to committee.

Then there's part iii. It says:

that any amendments to the bill be submitted no later than 5:00 PM EST on Thursday, May 30th, 2024

Part iv says:

clause-by-clause consideration of the bill start no later than 12:00 PM EST on June 3rd, 2024, and that the chair be empowered to set up extended hours and request additional House resources on that day

Mr. Hallan asked that the rest of part iv be struck. What he is asking to be struck—because it's important that folks watching know what we're voting on—are the following words:

if the committee has not completed clause-by-clause consideration of the bill by 11:00 AM on May 28th, 2024, all remaining amendments submitted to the committee shall be deemed moved, the chair shall put the question, forthwith and successively, without further debate, on all remaining clauses and proposed amendments, as well as each and every question necessary to dispose of clause-by-clause consideration of the Bill, as well as all questions necessary to report the bill to the House and to order the chair to report the bill to the House as soon as possible

If this motion as amended were to pass, those words would be struck.

Then there's part v. It says:

following the completion of the study of Bill C-69, the committee dedicate two meetings on its study on the financialization of housing, followed by no less than two meetings to consider the draft report on the current state of play on green finance, green investment, transition finance and transparency, standards and taxonomy

Those words would be struck under Mr. Hallan's amendment.

Then part vi says:

the committee dedicate its regular meetings on the week of June 17th, 2024, on the committee's study on inflation in the current Canadian economy.

The provision I want to circle back to is part ii.

There's been a lot of discussion about whether we could have Mark Carney appear at this committee.

I just note that I'm assuming that Mr. Davies will support this idea, because just last week he said, “I look forward to Mr. Carney's coming to this committee at the appropriate time in the appropriate study, which can happen in the next two months.” He is on side with the idea of Mr. Carney's coming to this committee.

Why are Conservatives asking for this? Well, Mr. Carney has been on the lecture circuit. He's been making speeches. He's been making speeches on government policy, and he's been critical of government policy in some aspects and supportive in others. He supports the inflationary deficit spending of this government, a government that doubled the national debt in eight years, which is quite a feat. The total federal debt from 1867 to the day this government was elected in 2015 was $616 billion. Now, it's over $1.2 trillion. The fiscal irresponsibility of this government is really astounding.

Mr. Carney apparently supports those deficits, though, according to his speeches. He also supports the carbon tax, and that's another reason we'd like to have him here, because I think Canadians deserve to know how much he wants to jack up the carbon tax on them. There are questions that we would have for him, and it's also clear that Mr. Carney wants to be the leader of the Liberal Party. He is anything but a random Liberal. He is likely the next leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, and I think Canadians deserve to hear what he thinks, and that's why we would like him to come to this committee. It's so that we can ask him a few questions.

It is clear that he is angling for that position. He may not want to axe the tax, Mr. Chair, but it's very clear that he wants to axe the Prime Minister. I think that if he wants to be the leader of the Liberal Party, it's time for him to come here and answer a few questions. It's not like he hasn't been to the finance committee before; he was the Governor of the Bank of Canada. He is very familiar with this environment, and I'm sure he would do quite well here.

With all that, what I'm leading to is to introduce a subamendment, Mr. Chair. My subamendment is to clause ii. I'll read it.

The words I would like to add come after the words “to consideration of the subject matter study of Bill C-69,”. After the comma, I would like to add the following words: “the week of the 28th one meeting be dedicated to hearing from the Minister of Finance for two hours and one meeting be dedicated to hear from Mark Carney for three hours”, and then the rest of the clause, starting with the words “barring referral” and ending at the last word of the clause, the word “committee”, would remain intact. Again, it's inserting the words after “Bill C-69,”: “the week of the 28th, one meeting be dedicated to hearing from the Minister of Finance for two hours and one meeting be dedicated to hear from Mark Carney for three hours”.

I don't know if this has been circulated yet or if the clerk has seen it and it's in translated form.

I'm getting the thumbs-up, so we've met all of our procedural obligations with respect to this amendment.

I'm putting that subamendment on the floor for further consideration, and I'm sure it will be an interesting debate.

With that, I am going to cede the floor for the time being to the next speaker, but I'm going to ask my friend Mr. Clerk to add my name back on to the speakers list for later. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Morantz.

We have MP Kurek, MP Ste-Marie, MP Goodridge and then MP Davies.

[Damien Kurek, Conservative, Battle River—Crowfoot, AB]

On a point of order, Mr. Chair, just to confirm, is the subamendment to the amendment in order?

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

It is. That's what I've heard. Clerk...?

We will suspend.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

It is in order.

[Damien Kurek, Conservative, Battle River—Crowfoot, AB]

On the same point of order, just to clarify, is there a new speaking list or do you continue with the same speaking list? I'm just curious as to what the tradition of the finance committee is. I'm not a regular member of this committee, but I'm happy to take guidance. I would like to be put on the speaking list if it is a new one, and if not, I think I'm on it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

You're next on the speaking list. Go ahead.

[Damien Kurek, Conservative, Battle River—Crowfoot, AB]

Okay. I appreciate that, and if I could, I'll stay on the speaking list to the previous one as well.

I think my friend and colleague Mr. Morantz did a great job in outlining some of the aspects that have led us to the debate today. I won't get too much into the details, because there may be a chance later on in the meeting to talk about the backroom deal, the not giving notice, the fact that we had officials here.... It's just unfortunate. I know that quite often in the House we hear how the government is quick to say that committees are masters of their own domain, yet it certainly seems that sometimes there is a puppet master pulling the strings.

I won't get into the into the details of that, but I think it's very prescient to the issue that Mr. Morantz has brought forward. I'm going to first talk about this.... Some of my my colleagues may find this a little hard to believe, but I'm going to put the contemporary political situation aside for just a moment, if I could, and outline why I think there is relevance to adding Mr. Carney. I'll get to the politics of that in a moment.

If we look at Mark Carney's past and his history, certainly we see that finance and Mr. Carney have gone hand in hand throughout his entire life. It's interesting, because he has done terms not only as Governor of the Bank of Canada but also as Governor of the Bank of England. I know that there is a whole lot of commentary that's been provided, and certainly there were some very tumultuous times, I know, having been a member of the Canada-U.K. parliamentary friendship group and having some U.K. family members. In fact, congratulations to my cousin Les Fry, a former police inspector, who just won one of the unitary council seats. Inspector Fry just won election as an Independent in the Dorset County unified council.

Keeping in tune with some of what has transpired in the U.K. over the last number of years, I think it's interesting, because it builds up, and I'm not necessarily confident that they're positive attributes in a resumé, and I'll get into the politics, as I said here, in a moment. I would think that when it comes to being able to hear from a former governor of not only the Bank of Canada but of the Bank of England, in light of the issues we're talking about.... Just going through his resumé, I see that he has had experience in private sector finance in working with Goldman Sachs and, I believe, in a number of locations in their global offices that were certainly not locations that somebody in the middle class would move around to—Boston, New York, Toronto, Tokyo—but there certainly is a lot of experience there.

He spent, I believe, over a decade with Goldman Sachs and spent a number of years at the Department of Finance. Then what is interesting is that in the lead-up to Mr. Carney's appointment as Governor of the Bank of Canada, I know there were a whole host of conversations.

In fact, it was a minority Parliament under a former prime minister, Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper, that oversaw that appointment. Especially in a minority parliament, I know that Mr. Harper took this very seriously. In fact, he was able to govern, if you can believe this, Chair, not to go off on too much of a tangent.... Former prime minister Mr. Harper was able to govern for five years without a coalition arrangement and without a confidence and supply arrangement. He did a tremendous amount of good work for our country and set our economy on a good footing, including during what were some of the most trying times economically in a very long time. I think there's a certain level of relevance to the conversation on being able to have Mr. Carney questioned.

I did watch when he came to committee, which was probably two and a half years ago. I know that it was in the height of the pandemic, and I'm not sure that he would necessarily be thrilled to come back—