Finance committee  Right now, I think we have several aspects to it. To go to Sean's point, I'd say the starting point is, why would we run a deficit? I think we need a long-term goal. What's our strategy? What do we want to see the economy being in 10 to 15 years from now? I have a particular vie

Finance committee  I agree that we need to have some clarity. The time frame that has been put out I think does make sense. I don't necessarily know if they will be successful in achieving it, but at the same time, as a firm, we have been out there saying that, given the slow growth backdrop, count

Finance committee  At this point in time, I think that rather than doing the division you have, we have to think about replacement of infrastructure versus trade enhancement infrastructure. I think we need to get Canada a better place to take advantage of export opportunities, so certainly a focus

Finance committee  It depends on what you're looking at. I look at the debt situation from this perspective. We run a large current account deficit. What we do is that we have to provide funds, and we borrow funds within the economy, so it's not the asset side; it's the funds themselves and the i

Finance committee  You bring up a good point, the idea that all housing is local, and there are conditions in various markets across the country. On the recent moves, I'll wait to see whether or not they're successful, but I think we needed to do something. We needed to bring in some measures. I

Finance committee  The one I would focus on most specifically is the one I made towards the end of my comments, on small business tax credits or the tax backdrop for small businesses. The one thing I look at for Canadian businesses, and it goes to innovation as well, is that we tend to have a focus

Finance committee  Part of that should be a lower corporate tax rate overall, in the context of removing the distortion and the small business tax threshold, so encouraging businesses in general to become more innovative. Part of that is turning Canada into a form of Germany, where we actually have

Finance committee  Thank you very much for the invitation to appear, Mr Chair and members of the committee. I'll just have some brief comments here. I'm here as chief economist of HSBC Bank Canada, which is the leading international bank in Canada. In my comments, I will present our view of the C

Finance committee  Concurrently, the household sector is deeply in debt, potentially leaving Canada more vulnerable and accident prone. This concerns HSBC, given that global imbalances have widened in an echo of the 2007-08 financial crisis. Notably, the Bank for International Settlements, the BIS,