Finance committee  Thank you very much for the invitation to appear with you today. It's an honour to be with the committee. My only regret is that, even as we speak, Jagmeet Singh, leader of the federal New Democratic Party, is going to be addressing a C.D. Howe Institute webinar. I had hoped to h

Finance committee  There is a lot to be said about the intergenerational impacts of what has happened. COVID has been very hard on young people. It has interrupted their schooling. Those who are graduating into the labour market currently are facing a rough time. There are many other things to be c

Finance committee  I think maybe it's a problem that the government is allowing its net worth to become as negative as it is. The debt we're talking about in Bill C-14, as you know, is a particular type of debt. The federal government has financial assets and physical assets, and it has other kinds

Finance committee  You have heard me on the question of whether I think there's too much debt. I think there is too much debt. I think it's time to rein it in.

Finance committee  I do think it is deeply regrettable. We've already talked about the international comparison. Let me point out that here, within Canada, the provinces and territories have produced budgets, and municipalities have produced budgets. They all faced important uncertainties about wh

Finance committee  I think increased revenues will definitely be part of the answer. We are not going to sustain the programs that we're talking about unless there is something done on the revenue side. In fact, I would go back to what I said about the cost of a program dollar. I think you're doi

Finance committee  I wrote a piece in The Globe and Mail on this just this week, so perhaps I'll jump in. The answer to your question is very much dependent on what kind of time frame we're talking about. I think the central banks have had a tough time even hitting their inflation targets over the

Finance committee  If I may jump in, I'll say that in the short run, I think there is going to be upward pressure on interest rates, because the economy is reviving and governments are still borrowing a great deal, so you have competition in credit markets that is likely to raise interest rates.

Finance committee  Chair, if I may advertise, we're missing Mr. Singh's presentation at the C.D. Howe Institute, but if you're interested in what Charles Goodhart has to say, you can tune in to that. We should have more parliamentarians at our meetings.

Finance committee  The C.D. Howe Institute and I myself were at the forefront, early on, of urging some of the relief measures that we have seen. I am not critical of the CERB in principle. I am not critical of the CEWS in principle. I am not critical of many of the credit supports the government p

Finance committee  Thank you very much for the invitation to be with you. I hope my observations will be helpful to the committee in its work. I'd like to say, by way of background, that monetary policy and inflation have been central to my work at the C.D. Howe Institute since I was a much younge

Finance committee  Yes, low interest rates certainly make it easier to borrow. With respect to the housing issue particularly, when interest rates get very low, the effect on asset values becomes noticeably non-linear. It's geometric. I think that it's very realistic to say that low interest rates

Finance committee  Well, I personally would prefer to see the deficit disappear quite quickly. There was a reference earlier to what happened in 2008-09, and what I very much liked about what the federal government did after that episode was that it did, after having run a deficit much bigger than

Finance committee  I think there is no substitute for having a target on the bottom line. I would like to see that be zero when it comes to the amount borrowed, and that means, practically speaking, having a small surplus. My two main reasons for that are, first, that the debt-to-GDP ratio has not

Finance committee  What I didn't say in my testimony is that there is a protected class. MPs are actually part of it. You have indexed pensions. Federal employees have indexed pensions. Most people don't. So for people who don't have indexed pensions, a long period of high inflation is extraordinar