Finance committee  There has been a lot of research on the optimum size of government. A lot of studies say 30% of the economy is government. We're at 42% or 41%. I think there's lots of room to make governments smaller and pass the money along to private citizens.

Finance committee  That's why we have independent think tanks that accept no money from governments. Our goal is to push the envelope at the Frontier Centre. We hear from politicians privately that they agree with us, but it's very difficult to move the ball. Again that's our role. I think this can be framed in terms of lots of benefits for Canada if it's done right.

Finance committee  Again, I'm arguing in favour of diversity, experimentation, and innovation. I look at the public sector in general in Canada, and it's not a world-beater. I could look at Australia, or New Zealand, or other places and ask, “What can we learn from them?” We tend to have a bias towards in-house monopolies with no accounting measurement.

Finance committee  You also have 10 laboratories of experiments where provinces might want to try new things, and what will happen is that there will be a sorting out and eventually the things that are working the best will be adopted by other provinces. What we have now is a system that is artificially enlarging the size of the public sector.

Finance committee  You should be reducing taxes and reducing debt. Again, there is a major opportunity for the government to look at structural reform within the federal civil service. I would encourage it to look at some of the best practices from other countries. A simple thing like bringing a capital charge into the government's books and requiring departments to actually have a cost of capital for different assets, in my experience, would give departments an incentive to privatize assets.

Finance committee  You're creating private sector growth. What I'd like to say is that while I would encourage the government to do the European trade deal, the trans-Pacific deal has also been a great opportunity for western Canada, where my think tank is based. What I would like to stress is that one of the items that has held things up is supply management, which has affected our grain industry, beef, and parts of our agricultural economy.

Finance committee  It is absolutely the right path.

Finance committee  Yes, lower taxes are good. Again, we would go toward general tax cuts, raising the exemption. We would tend not to go toward boutique tax cuts, or tax credit programs, which has been the practice before.

Finance committee  I thank the committee for inviting me to come all the way here from western Canada. I want to talk about three things today very quickly, three of the 30,000-foot type of items. Number one is fixing the mismatch between taxing power and the federal government's jurisdiction.