Finance committee  Good morning, Mr. Chairman and honourable members of the committee. Thank you. I am grateful for the chance to appear before you this morning on behalf of the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies. Canada is a country with a wealth of resources and possibilities, but it is often

Finance committee  I do, to some extent. We are very much in favour of immigration, of course. You cannot grow an economy unless you grow the population. Where it becomes a bit of a chicken-and-egg thing is that while we are working very hard to attract more people from outside—the gloom outside no

Finance committee  Thank you. We dispute the belief that it is the government's job to create jobs. When governments set out to create jobs, they essentially have to remove large amounts of money from the productive sectors of the economy. As we have seen time and time again, governments are not

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Dusseault, for the question. Some industries operate here on a seasonal cycle, but that's not at all new in Canada. There are also seasonal jobs in the rest of the country, for instance in the Prairies. Obviously, wheat can't be grown in the middle of February, f

Finance committee  Certainty is a huge issue for business people and investors. We have, for example, created a little bit of a regime in this country, but particularly in this province, of uncertainty regarding energy. I have been here three years, and in those three years fracking was allowed a

Finance committee  I'd be happy to comment, and Finn has things to say as well. This is, as the cliché goes, a shovel-ready project. If we're looking to provide a stimulus to the economy, this is one that is ready to go, provided of course that the proper environmental safeguards are in place. Oil

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Mr. Chairman and honourable members of the committee, good afternoon. I am grateful for the chance to appear before you on behalf of the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies this afternoon. Alarm bells have been sounding about the declining population of Atlantic Canada. The r

Citizenship and Immigration committee  A concerted effort from the universities in Atlantic Canada is a very well-oiled machinery to attract more international students. The reference I made was that we must attract American immigrants. I wasn't talking precisely about students in that sense. Certainly, we view Amer

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes. It's been a while since the word has been out that the decline in population here is causing shortages of labour for different reasons. There's a natural growth that is stagnant and has now become negative in Nova Scotia. As well, there is the issue of the flight of skilled

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We have great universities, a great culture, and wonderful natural settings, all of which attract people. The issue is keeping them. The only thing that will keep them and generate the wealth we need to be able to pay for the universities and the infrastructure we have is an expa

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, honourable members of the committee, and witnesses, good morning. I'm grateful for the chance to appear before you on behalf of the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies this morning. Among the greatest killers of productivity are less-tha

Finance committee  Yes, Mr. Fergus. Thank you for your question. I was not referring to a historical dynamic, but rather to a calculation we just did, a few days ago, concerning only three factors: personal income, fuel revenue and consumer product tax rates. When we put all that together and tak

Finance committee  I don't have the figures going back 50 years, but it seems to me that what you are saying is not right. Fifty years ago, people were not paying as much tax compared with....

Finance committee  I suppose that's true.

Finance committee  In Atlantic Canada the problem is even more acute than in the rest of the country.