Finance committee  Mr. Chair, members of the committee, I am really pleased to be joining you today. This is especially so on a subject of such great importance to a large majority of Canadians, and especially, I note, today, when tax returns of all Canadians are due. I want to make two points

Finance committee  I'd like to reply specifically to Mr. Brison's question, and to the earlier one on the whole notion of equality of opportunity. There isn't a sane adult in Canada, whatever the ideological perspective, I think, who would be against equality of opportunity. For me, the serious d

Finance committee  All I can say is that the old movies are still with us. When I was around in this place, 150 years ago, we had the same issue with various governments—sometimes a federal Liberal government, sometimes in the past a federal Conservative government—and that is whether the transfers

Finance committee  To give a very brief answer, it was disastrous. I think it was the biggest net cut in social programming in post-war Canadian history that flowed from that. If I may say so, being as objective and as non-partisan as I can be in this—but it's a judgment—if you look at what Mr. C

Finance committee  This is the subject of a big discussion. It wasn't the massive cutbacks in social programming that turned the Canadian economy around. In my view, it was the booming American economy, created by a different approach by Mr. Clinton, that had that effect.

Finance committee  It is a complex issue.

Finance committee  In the summer of 1987?

Finance committee  Yes, I would think retrospectively that we should have had them.

Finance committee  Absolutely, when we were riding high in polls all over the country, I think.... God was not performing correctly in Canadian history.

Finance committee  If I understand the question, and I think I do, a lot of the recommendations that have been made around the table, including those made by me, are within provincial jurisdictional authority. I am in favour of using the federal spending power, but I am also in favour of doing it i

Finance committee  To comment briefly, I really strongly agree with your orientation. I grew up in a town with a high school that had what we called “technical training” of the kind you've talked about, and it has disappeared too. I've been spending some time in recent months in the United Kingdom

Finance committee  Well, if it's done and they get the skilled jobs, then it can be, but there's a point that I and a number of others made today. It's that the other thing we have to address, frankly, is unionization. Germany has one of the highest rates in Europe for unions, and one of the majo

Finance committee  I have not.

Finance committee  The tax cuts that I refer to, or that we do, because it was a collective enterprise to produce that report.... A lot of people were involved. A lot of academics across the country contributed to it. I'm not going to give the statistics off the top of my head, but on the general

Finance committee  Let me put it in context. It has been said by a number of people in recent years that the top 1% have had about 30% of all the income growth in the country. The argument is that if they have really benefited, to generalize a lot, from globalization and other reasons, disproport