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Finance committee  Absolutely. Consider a coffee maker. A low-income household is probably going to buy an entry-level coffee maker that is built in China. Somebody who makes six or seven figures a year is probably going to buy an expensive espresso machine built in Switzerland that is not affected by these changes.

May 21st, 2013Committee meeting

Prof. Mike Moffatt

Finance committee  The regressive issue is a large one. What I worry about—and again, this is coming from southwestern Ontario, from seeing the job losses in our area—is a weakened retail sector. At the end of the day somebody is going to end up paying these taxes, and Canadian consumers are increasingly deciding to go across the border.

May 21st, 2013Committee meeting

Prof. Mike Moffatt

Finance committee  If it is valid, it's a very unusual one, given that we're not negotiating with the vast majority of these countries, including China and Brazil.

May 21st, 2013Committee meeting

Prof. Mike Moffatt

Finance committee  Well, keep in mind that the GDP—

May 21st, 2013Committee meeting

Prof. Mike Moffatt

Finance committee  Okay, sorry.

May 21st, 2013Committee meeting

Prof. Mike Moffatt

Finance committee  Okay, so.... No, I have not been a candidate for the Green Party of Canada. Why don't I give you my entire political history? Federally I was a Progressive Conservative for a number of years.

May 21st, 2013Committee meeting

Prof. Mike Moffatt

Finance committee  After the merger, I took out a membership in the Conservative Party of Canada. I went to the first leadership convention and I voted for Mr. Tony Clement. Unfortunately, he did not win. I left the party shortly afterwards. I was in the Green Party for a while and I held a number of roles, including riding president of London North Centre.

May 21st, 2013Committee meeting

Prof. Mike Moffatt

May 21st, 2013Committee meeting

Prof. Mike Moffatt

Finance committee  There are two criteria that the government uses, but the major one is basically where countries have more than $4,000 a year in per capita GDP. That's really small. We're talking about a number of countries whose per capita wealth is one tenth of Canada's, so they're still quite developing.

May 21st, 2013Committee meeting

Prof. Mike Moffatt

Finance committee  It would be somewhat difficult because then they would come back and say, “Why are you including us and not including this other country that has the same per capita GDP wealth?” It would be very difficult to come up with a criterion that doesn't make it obvious that we're just saying, “Well, we think you're really big, so we're going to put some tariffs on you.”

May 21st, 2013Committee meeting

Prof. Mike Moffatt

Finance committee  Keep in mind here that at the end of the day it's the importer who legally pays these tariffs. We can't tax some entity in China simply for jurisdictional reasons. The idea here is that if this does affect China somehow, the importers will say, “Well now, I have to pay this tax, I'm not going to buy from you”, or “If I am going to buy from you, you're going to have to lower your price.”

May 21st, 2013Committee meeting

Prof. Mike Moffatt

Finance committee  Yes, based on the government's logic, absolutely this will harm Canadian retailers and consumers.

May 21st, 2013Committee meeting

Prof. Mike Moffatt

Finance committee  We're Canada, so everybody focuses on hockey, but the tariff changes that were made apply to sporting equipment and sporting helmets across the board.

May 21st, 2013Committee meeting

Prof. Mike Moffatt

Finance committee  Absolutely, the fact that we're sitting here having this discussion about what kinds of helmets this does and does not apply to, other than just having a line item that says “helmets”, indicates that this is making the tariff code more complicated.

May 21st, 2013Committee meeting

Prof. Mike Moffatt

Finance committee  Yes, absolutely. We're already seeing a great deal of cross-border shopping. Anybody who has gone to Sarnia, Ontario or to Windsor, Ontario sees first-hand the stream of cars going across the border. We say that on average the tariffs are increasing by 3%, but the increases could be anywhere from 0.5% to 18%, depending on the goods.

May 21st, 2013Committee meeting

Prof. Mike Moffatt