Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks to the committee for inviting me. I think this is my first visit to the committee in 2009. It's a delight to be back to see familiar faces and some new ones as well. I want to start with some observations on financial market performance, turn to

Finance committee  Sure, I'll go very quickly. The lease and loan financing industry, and the auto sector, and the vehicle sector certainly perceive a sense of urgency in seeing financing move quickly. Absolutely they do. From the point of view of designing and running a program, however, there a

Finance committee  Mr. Chairman, that would be a reasonable characterization. There is just one point I want to add, and it's a very important point. It's that the program won't succeed if consumers and businesses don't return to the loan and lease vehicle marketplace. If they don't come back, th

Finance committee  Perhaps. Thank you. I have to apologize. We released our brief only yesterday, and we did not have time to translate it. Is the implication of government measures to improve the quality of assets on the balance sheets of financial institutions necessarily that those financial i

Finance committee  The insured mortgage purchase program is intended to lift mortgages from financial institutions' balance sheets. That's run by Canada's treasury. What we're doing is substituting Government of Canada securities on the banks' books for mortgage-backed securities, which were alread

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for that question. It's an intriguing measure to contemplate in the current circumstances, because when we look at financial market turmoil and economic turmoil, tax reform, especially sales tax reform, isn't obviously the first thing a lot of us would r

Finance committee  I'll take that one, thank you, if I may, Mr. Chairman. A common securities regulator would be very helpful for the securities-issuing business and for its clients, because you have better clarity of regulation, better clarity of enforcement mechanisms, and better international c

Finance committee  If I may, Mr. Chairman, I believe everything the member reported is roughly correct, except the history is longer. If you go back to the Community Reinvestment Act in the United States, we have a much longer history going back to the beginning of the 1990s, and even earlier in di

Finance committee  Oui. Merci. Very quickly—

Finance committee  Thank you. In 2002, DBRS, the bond rating service, published a positive assessment of non-bank-backed ABCP in the Canadian market. At the same time, Standard & Poor's, another rating agency, refused to rate them. They issued a document that explained exactly what their conce

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. Good afternoon. It's great to be back with this committee. It's a very, very friendly place to be—sometimes, anyway. I'd like everyone to recall, as always, that while I am vice-president for research at the C.D. Howe Insti

Finance committee  If I may, I'd like to take that question, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for the question, Honourable Member. I work for a non-partisan, non-profit public policy research shop, and accordingly we publish on a wide range of issues, sometimes publishing opposing views by scholars who wr

Finance committee  The correct way to put it, Mr. Chairman and honourable members, is on a present value basis the federal government's net revenue is positive, given where the tax rate is right now, if we bring it down one percentage point. It's just a long-term assessment.

Finance committee  If you look at the responsiveness of investment to tax rates, a reasonable timeframe to expect, given where we are and a reduction to come somewhere near to paying itself, would be in the four- to ten-year framework.

Finance committee  Arguably. It depends on the investment response and other things that are going on in the economy. For instance, we have a lot of businesses right now sitting on fairly large treasuries. In other words, businesses have been holding back on investment for the last couple of years.