Finance committee  We're doing a lot of work in this area, actually, on information for Canadians. We have a “get it in writing” campaign right now, which we're collaborating on with Revenue Canada. It's been on for many years, but it's been reinvigorated over the past couple. It's to educate Canad

Finance committee  We've certainly have been hugely supportive of investments by government in core infrastructure to address affordability and alleviate the need for development charges and taxes. Our concern with development taxes is when they start funding things in the rest of the community tha

Finance committee  Yes, the previous government did put in the home accessibility tax credit and we would propose that for addressing climate change. Exactly the same thing can be done for energy efficiency.

Finance committee  In terms of those specific actions, the federal government can take immediate steps to improve affordability and contribute to the prosperity of middle-class Canadians. First, Canadians must get the maximum benefit from infrastructure and transit investment. To this end, the fed

Finance committee  Certainly, given the most recent move on down payments, it would make sense under the current regime for it to be under $500,000. We think that would be just fine. We're really talking about entry-level people and getting them into home ownership. Our calculations suggest that by

Finance committee  Interestingly, not necessarily. There was a major shortage of skilled trades in Alberta as everything was going. Many of them have left Alberta and gone back to their home provinces. In some instances that is providing and filling that gap, but in other instances we haven't see t

Finance committee  From our perspective, one of the things that the TFSA does is that it obviously encourages savings and provides a vehicle for people to save for down payments and the like for their houses. Currently given the way house prices are going, you know you can put money into your RRSP

Finance committee  To the question earlier about why we have a mismatch of jobs as well, I think that for quite a while Canada has been pushing our young people into a university education, degree, and career that doesn't necessarily always lead to the jobs that are at hand. I think one of the im

Finance committee  It varies from municipality to municipality. We're seeing numbers from 20% to 25% of government imposed taxes from all three levels.

Finance committee  Yes. We're seeing that similar kind of decline where the construction costs are becoming a fraction. One example we've seen is, in the GTA, the same house built a decade ago versus today. It used to be that the construction cost of the house was 40%, and then you had land, taxes,

Finance committee  That's a huge part of it.

Finance committee  Thank you. The 8,500 member companies of our association across the country are in the business of building new homes and renovating existing ones, working hard to develop the communities we call home. As you know, the residential construction industry has been a major source of

Human Resources committee  I think in the typical Canadian way, it's somewhere in between. We have the desire for national standards and consistency in areas where the jurisdiction happens to be provincial, which is kind of what comes up in the skilled trades area. A step like the internal trade agreement,

Human Resources committee  More can always be done. I feel that we are on the right track. We are happy with the existing programs and we just want to improve some aspects of them a little. We really like the direction that the Canada Job Grant is going in. As we have already said, it focuses on partici

Human Resources committee  What we're really talking about here, especially with LMDA-type programming, is getting somebody into that first job in a trade. As Mr. Reid was saying, it's that first move. Once you're moving from job to job, then you're set, right? It's really getting somebody into that positi