Finance committee  Good morning. Thanks for having me. My name is Paul Kershaw. I'm a professor at the University of British Columbia and founder of Generation Squeeze. Gen Squeeze is a voice for younger Canadians and politics in the market backed by cutting-edge research. In your role, you may k

Finance committee  Yes.

Finance committee  Absolutely. Let me just answer that question really quickly. There are four million more seniors today than there were in 1976, and the demographic shift of adding four million people into that category has coincided with a $42 billion increase in annual spending. Let's put that

Finance committee  That's an excellent question. It's a very broad question. I'm not an expert on tax evasion offshore. I tend to be somebody who always has to dig into the data, and there's been a dearth of data about offshore issues. I'm happy to hear the PBO is now going to be sharing that more

Finance committee  In contrast to asking the federal government to make projections, what we're asking for is to report what's happening in the current year and to interpret that in light of what happened in the previous decades. There's a great deal of certainty about that data, and it can provide

Finance committee  Thank you very much. I have been requested today to speak about a solutions lab I lead in partnership with the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation called Wealth and the Problem of Housing Inequity across Generations in Canada. I do so as a UBC professor and founder of Genera

Finance committee  Righto.

Finance committee  Thank you very much. I was in the midst of giving an energized Zoom experience, talking about how government efforts to pick the low-hanging fruit on housing affordability had proven to have limited lasting influence to dampen down home prices or close the frightening gap betwee

Finance committee  No, that's not accurate. As I just described, we're looking at a range of policy issues that entangle everyday households, mine included, in counting on home prices rising faster than earnings. We actually are focusing on three areas directed by our participants: monetary and len

Finance committee  I'm so pleased that you are focused on it. These are important issues and I welcome that. If you look at the text, it's clearly talking about public finance, of which tax policy is one, and that's a very broad category. I think what you're wanting to get from me is some sort of—

Finance committee  —I have never had any conversation with any MP, any minister or any senior bureaucrat who has ever asked me to come to consult on the design of a specific tax policy with regard to housing.

Finance committee  If I can just make sure that's on the record, then I'm delighted to chat more intellectually about—

Finance committee  When you're talking about my own research work, yes, I do.

Finance committee  The evidence does give good reason for us to think about trying to cut taxes for middle and lower earners, which will create efficiencies, and compensate by asking folks like me who are now the 9% of Canadians who have homes worth more than $1 million to contribute slightly more

Finance committee  In this particular moment, you and I are talking about the possibility of reducing taxes on earnings and trying to find revenue elsewhere. The focus of the lab is much broader than that. That's why we're looking at things related to monetary policy, lending policy, a broad catego