Madam Chair, I'll continue with my remarks because I wasn't quite finished what I had prepared.
I want to get back to another one of the individuals who contributed to this particular paper that I was referencing, Alex Himelfarb, the former clerk of the Privy Council. He said:
History provides no perfect analogy for the combined health and socio-economic catastrophe we now confront. Certainly not since the Depression have we sustained such a broad and deep economic hit. We’ve rightly spent a lot to provide relief and we’re going to have to spend more—depending on our ambitions, possibly a great deal more.
I thought that was a really good quote to bring to this committee to, again, substantiate how I think the economic impact of COVID-19 is far greater than many of the other recessions we have been through, and even greater in kind and in magnitude than the Great Depression. Alex also said:
Many of the aid programs will have to be extended, some may have to become permanent, further public investment will be needed to meet the urgent needs of municipalities and get the economy moving. We can expect debates about objectives – whether simply recovery or also repair of cracks tragically exposed, or whether to refashion a more equitable, inclusive and sustainable economy.
Why I bring these two quotes as some of my final remarks to substantiate everything I've been saying is that I think the former clerk of the Privy Council was really, at the time, grappling with, and even recommending and foreseeing, that many of our aid programs would have to be extended. This is precisely what the government did, and some were slightly redesigned. I know that I've spoken to those before.
What's interesting is that he mentioned this key debate at the end of the quote that I used, which is, “We can expect debates about objectives, whether simply recovery or also repair of cracks tragically exposed, or whether to refashion a more equitable, inclusive and sustainable economy.” That's a really interesting conversation about whether we're just going to build back in the same way, in other words, almost reinstall the same inequities that we've experienced throughout this pandemic, or whether we're going to try to address those.
I think our government's evaluation and resetting of its agenda and the considerable time that was taken to do that, which I know only really compromised one sitting day of Parliament, was really on the mark in terms of what it amounted to, where it focused its attention, and I think it's supported by these remarks from the former clerk of the Privy Council.
I've tried to provide more evidence and data to substantiate why it would be helpful for us to hear from the Minister of Finance and to renew that as a plea to the members opposite to hopefully support the amendment that I put forward.
I'll wrap up there for now and I thank all the members for the time.