Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Easter, and thank you to the committee for the invitation to speak today on Bill C-74. Overall, I believe that this was a positive budget, and this implementation bill of that budget reflects items that the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has been advocati

Finance committee  I think the Canada child benefit, as I've said before, will be important. Once we get the full dataset, which will probably be released some time next year, we'll see a fairly substantial decrease, particularly in child poverty, as well as in the poverty rates for the parents of

Finance committee  I think, broadly, the gender analysis of the budget was a positive move forward. The fact that the legislation on equal pay isn't out yet, I think hopefully it will come. For instance when we look at some things like employment insurance not going all the way toward what we see

Finance committee  It's an interesting question, and the fact that you would get a different drop-out provision for the CPP expansion versus the base CPP will almost certainly have some impact, particularly for those who are dropping out due to disability provisions, which only provides you with 70

Finance committee  Exactly. It appears that the averaging approach, as opposed to the drop-out provision, allowed the federal government to move forward with the legislation without having to go back to the provinces and renegotiate. Hopefully the impact is not particularly large. At this point, it

Finance committee  I certainly think that the panel of academics that was put together last fall to look at tax expenditures in particular was a good starting point. It's unfortunate that no public report came as a result of that. Certainly, an in-depth examination of tax expenditures is a great

Finance committee  There's a clear challenge, in that CRA and maybe the people who are using private corporations as a means of savings don't know in advance what they're going to do with that money. Maybe they will use the money to invest in their business and grow the Canadian economy, or maybe t

Finance committee  Given that it affects half the population, as you know, this is an important part of what governments do, and it's certainly not anything new that the federal government does gender analysis. I think what's new is that it has moved from the departmental level up into the public b

Finance committee  It's an interesting age group in the sense that federal and provincial supports are relatively strong for seniors, in particular. We have established basic incomes across the country of over $16,000 to $19,000, depending on the province, which is relatively high. The same is some

Finance committee  Thanks so much, Mr. Chair. Thanks to the finance committee for your invitation to speak today in these troubling times. I'd like to thank members of the committee and all MPs for their rapid action taken to combat the economic impact of COVID-19 and their willingness to rapidly

Finance committee  I certainly think that rent, in both the commercial and the private sectors, is going to become an increasingly big issue if the public health necessity of the lockdown continues. Certainly there is the question of deferral of residential mortgages, deferral of rent payments an

Finance committee  It would appear that the position the banks appear to be taking at this point is the deferral one that we were discussing earlier, potentially the deferral of interest. It's not the deferral of payments for individual mortgages. There does also seem to be a push to lower interest

Finance committee  The emergency benefit, I think, is a great program. Its speed and the ease with which people can apply has been commented on, but there remain a number of odd constraints on accessing the program, like the one you just mentioned. Given the number of applications to date, I think

Finance committee  I would state that the CERB, while closing in on a universal benefit, is not yet a universal benefit, given some of the constraints. For instance, March 15 was the point at which you had to become unemployed in order to access it. Another constraint was the requirement for $5,000

Finance committee  I can definitely do that, Mr. Chair. Thank you. In terms of the wage subsidy, I think it is clear, but unless the federal government is clear that companies are not going to be paying out dividends and conducting share buy-backs, inevitably you will have bad actors in the same w