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Finance committee Good morning. I'll start my presentation with some brief observations about income inequality trends in Canada, and then follow up with some suggestions about the types of federal policy action that would be most beneficial. Income inequality is a challenging subject. This is s
April 25th, 2013Committee meeting
Michael Holden
Finance committee Sure. Well, in terms of the 10% increase, I wanted to highlight the fact that a lot of the time, if you have somebody at a low-income level and a high-income level and they both increase by the same amount, you end up changing just the size of the number that you're talking abo
April 25th, 2013Committee meeting
Michael Holden
Finance committee The question of the factors that have been contributing to inequality were discussed by Professor Boadway I think very well—i.e., that things like technological change, the move of manufacturing overseas, and the loss of manufacturing employment have contributed to that problem.
April 25th, 2013Committee meeting
Michael Holden
Finance committee The difficulty, I think, is that it's easy to look at these things with 20/20 hindsight. The move to free trade, I think most people would agree, has benefited Canada on the whole. There have been industries that have shut down. There have been other industries that have prospere
April 25th, 2013Committee meeting
Michael Holden
Finance committee There are a few things. Removing barriers to interprovincial trade is something that can help in that area. One of the things I was going to suggest, which just got cut, was that the government does provide some tax credits for individuals to move across the country or to move fo
April 25th, 2013Committee meeting
Michael Holden
Finance committee Yes.
April 25th, 2013Committee meeting
Michael Holden
Finance committee Yes, absolutely.
April 25th, 2013Committee meeting
Michael Holden
Finance committee I thought it was an interesting idea. As was mentioned before, it does put the onus on businesses, employers, and employees to take the initiative to meet their own specific labour needs. That was a positive. I hesitate only because the program hasn't been implemented yet. There'
April 25th, 2013Committee meeting
Michael Holden
Finance committee It remains to be seen how well it works, but it has potential. Yes.
April 25th, 2013Committee meeting
Michael Holden
Finance committee Yes.
April 25th, 2013Committee meeting
Michael Holden
Finance committee There are a lot of steps that we're taking.... As mentioned before, removing or almost eliminating seniors' poverty has been one of our policy successes in the last decade or two.
April 25th, 2013Committee meeting
Michael Holden
Finance committee I think that's absolutely where the greatest potential lies as it stands now. I live in Alberta, and one of the biggest public policy issues we study is how we can help aboriginal Canadians better share in the economic opportunities from resource development on the reserves, or
April 25th, 2013Committee meeting
Michael Holden
Finance committee More of that kind of work is needed. There's also more work needed, I think, in helping build the capacity to better participate in these kinds of economic development projects that we're talking about.
April 25th, 2013Committee meeting
Michael Holden
Finance committee I'd emphasize what you mentioned before about creating conditions for economic growth and generating economic growth as a prerequisite for any initiative we want to take in terms of addressing income inequality or quality of opportunity. For that we need to ensure we have good
April 25th, 2013Committee meeting
Michael Holden