Finance committee  Yes, absolutely. Actually, just a couple of weeks ago, we had a round table with our local chambers from rural and remote communities in Canada. They're fully behind that, the need for access to broadband Internet, in addition to help for their rural economy, help with financial

Finance committee  A comprehensive review of the tax system could have a similar incentive, too, toward reducing the cost of business around being able to go to those remote communities. There have been a lot of boutique tax credits and cutting and pasting over the years, and if we just look at how

Finance committee  We are calling for a means to an end, but we have some ideas as to what needs to be looked at according to principles of fairness, competitiveness, efficiency and neutrality. One of the areas to look at for competitiveness is adjusting the tax mix. Obviously, there are a lot of

Finance committee  To address the first part of your question, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce certainly has a position on climate change and we believe that it does exist. What our—

Finance committee  You know I'm an economist. I'm not sure if I'm in a position to talk to that. But when it comes to the way that it's being implemented, we are layering a number of regulations on top of carbon pricing, which is creating problems for the use of carbon pricing itself. Because one o

Finance committee  Carbon pricing with regulations pancaked on top of it is going to be detrimental to our economy.

Finance committee  It's an either-or for businesses in a lot of ways. Either you try to reduce emissions by regulating, which is not the approach that we think is the right one, or you do it with the flexibility that is available on a market mechanism. Doing both of them together reduces that flexi

Finance committee  To the first part of your question, when it comes to Canadian competitiveness, there are other rankings, for instance, the World Economic Forum's ranking where Canada ranks 12th in the world. I think you're very right. One of the reasons that people do invest in Canada is the l

Finance committee  Yes, absolutely. I appreciate the question. At the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, with our membership of 200,000 businesses, 450 local chambers of commerce and numerous industry associations, we see the fiscal issue in the context of our Canadian competitiveness globally. I think

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. lt's a pleasure to be here today. For billions of people throughout the world, Canada stands as a symbol of hope and opportunity. However, we cannot afford to take our prosperity for granted. Every day, the businesses that drive

Public Safety committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. It's a real pleasure to be here with you today. I'm Trevin Stratton. I'm the chief economist at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. The Canadian chamber is the voice of business in Canada, and represents a network of ov

Finance committee  Absolutely, yes. The Atlantic immigration pilot was a regional pilot project to figure out what skills were needed in different regions or different parts of Atlantic Canada and to fill those with immigration applications. The idea is to expand that to the entire rest of Canada.

Finance committee  We're for a filling-in-the-gaps approach to a national pharmacare plan. It depends which study you look at, but most Canadians are covered under a private plan or a provincial plan when it comes to pharmacare. We don't want to duplicate that work that's already being done. Most C

Finance committee  A good place to start is concluding a modernized NAFTA at the earliest possible opportunity to defend Canadian export interests. At the same time, Canada urgently needs to diversify its export markets to facilitate the movement of products, services and people more quickly, relia

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. I am very pleased to be here today. The Canadian economy is facing some incredible challenges these days. Over the past year, the confluence of trade uncertainty, regulatory complexity and the tax burden have impacted the compet