Finance committee  It's certainly a problem that is bigger than us. It's affecting all the major western advanced industrialized nations. In fact, many of them appear to be in a much worse position than Canada. Think about Japan, which has had 15 fiscal stimulus packages over the last few years. Eu

Finance committee  Thank you. I'd like to summarize a paper on macroeconomics that will be released shortly by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. Almost all economic analysts agreed on the necessity of adopting extraordinary monitoring and fiscal stimulus at the worst of the recession in 2008 and 2

Human Resources committee  In broad terms, yes, but the carbon tax that's being proposed, and we're talking about 10¢ a litre, compared to the very low price of energy, I don't think is going to have a major impact.

Human Resources committee  The specific programs that.... Well, I don't want to get into specific programs. I think the general flavour of the response is that government can have the best of intentions. Governments cannot legislate prosperity. That leads to mistakes like they have in Alberta, where rais

Human Resources committee  I don't know that tax policy is the way out of this. Throughout the industrial world, in Europe, North America, and Japan, we're stuck in chronic slow growth. That is the million-dollar question. How do we get out of this mess? There's an increasing consensus that the tradition

Human Resources committee  There are two ways of approaching this. One approach looks at relative poverty, how we are doing compared to other people, and it's a constantly moving target. That's what LICOs and LIMs do. Then there is poverty in an absolute sense, can you just not afford to put the basics o

Human Resources committee  He publishes a lot on absolute poverty estimates. Something like 4% of the population is in absolute poverty. The problem with all these measures, though, which goes back to what Geranda was talking about, is measuring outcomes. It was also the fundamental problem when I worked

Human Resources committee  Not at all. Thank you for the invitation. Next week I'll be presenting to the pre-budget consultations on economic growth. As an economist, I believe the order should be the other way around. One addresses the fundamental problem of economic growth first and then decides on how

Finance committee  It's not as simple a question as thinking that because older workers are the most productive, if they leave the workforce, productivity is going to decline. It doesn't work like that any more than the least productive companies exiting the market via bankruptcy increasing product

Finance committee  I'll jump in. I certainly read the speech. He's absolutely right. The Bank of Canada cannot control the exchange rate. It simply can't, so there's no point in even trying.

Finance committee  I was listening to a Federal Reserve Board president today talking about how the Europeans and New Zealand, and Japan for that matter, are all clearly trying to talk down their exchange rates. That's one of the problems. We're in a world now where basically everybody is trying to

Finance committee  I'd just like to clarify. I don't think there's a pension crisis in this country. I've written extensively about how I think the number one way to address pension problems is to cut back on early retirement and get people working longer in their lives, as Kevin and I are doing.

Finance committee  The managing director of MLI, Brian Lee Crowley, has written some material on the cost of interprovincial trade barriers. He addressed a conference recently here in Ottawa on the matter. It's hard to put a number on it, partly because it's multifaceted. For example, a big concern

Finance committee  I think I'll elaborate a little on what I mentioned earlier in my introduction, which is that we need to fundamentally reform how we deliver health care as the population ages. That's already the biggest source of public sector spending that's going to have to undergo fundamental

Finance committee  I'm not sure I understood the question well; you're asking whether provincial deficits are the responsibility of the federal government or of the provincial government, I believe. In my opinion, the provinces created the problem. And so solving it is their responsibility. The pro