Finance committee  Yes, I think you make a number of great points there. On that time thought, I think that has to be an essential part. There are timeboxes. Again, in the work we looked at, one thing you can say consistently across the board is that we take a long time to get decisions made, wheth

Finance committee  Yes, very much so. We very much like the sunset clauses. We talked about that too in a previous way about innovation, because we have a lot of innovation programs, and some have worked well, but it's hard to stop them. It's not necessarily as if a program that was developed in 19

Finance committee  That's a very good push, I think you're saying, and that we should look at it. What we were trying to get away from, first of all, was just GDP growth itself. Minister Morneau and the Prime Minister were very tough on us in saying that, if we just went for GDP growth, that would

Finance committee  As you said, I think the good news is that we have in place a number of initiatives that are under way. I know that in Finance they're saying, “Make sure you understand some of these.” Even the ability people have to use some of their RRSP money for education is there, but it's n

Finance committee  I think that's a huge asset for all of us. Also, by the way, I might say that with the number of people who have been educated in Canada and then gone back home, for example Indonesia, we've got effectively ambassadors there. The people who have gone to university or vocational s

Finance committee  That's a great point. We tried to do so in the workforce participation report; that was in our second wave of recommendations. We felt that, with indigenous people, we have a long way to go on that front and we think that ensuring that there are incentives in place to enable a hi

Finance committee  I think you make a great point that we need to do much more to help support our SMEs and businesses going abroad. And to your point, I think, one, we probably do need to spend more to do that, but also maybe do some things differently as well. If you look at Germany, where well

Finance committee  What we've found is that Canadian SMEs—as we've said before—export relatively less than our peers in the OECD. We're not as export-oriented, so there's an opportunity just from a benchmark point of view. There are some very good programs in place that the BDC is doing, but it doe

Finance committee  Yes. I agree with your approach that we have to be careful where the burden gets put. The way I'd look at it is that we need to embrace the fact that this technology is coming. There will be automated cars, electric vehicles, whether we like them or not. I don't think we should f

Finance committee  You raise a very good point, and I think you probably have the numbers. If you look at overall debt in the global economy from 2008 to 2017, you can see that it's gone up significantly. I worry about two things. One is how smooth the process is to get to more normal rates, and wh

Finance committee  There are some examples in other countries. Malaysia and New Zealand have focused on SMEs. It's not all SMEs. They've kind of put criteria in place for those that would have more of a chance, but they've increased significantly the exports of those companies. That's one of the re

Finance committee  It's an excellent point, but we haven't gone to the level of detail you're suggesting. It sounds to me like a very good idea on the face of it. We did think about this with unemployment, and we thought about it with some other groups that don't participate in the economy as much.

Finance committee  Thank you. I really think that's a huge opportunity for Canadian businesses. Our Canadian SMEs, for example, I think account for less than 30% of our exports. If you look at places such as Italy and Germany, that's well over 50% and up to 70%, so there's opportunity. Very much t

Finance committee  Yes. As you said, it's a deeper set. It's abut trade. We have many capabilities, as I said, such as in our natural resources and agrifood, but we also have our services—health services and financial services—and the way our retirement program works. A lot of countries would love

Finance committee  I'm not familiar with the details of Bill C-69, so I apologize for that. We will make sure that we look at that. It sounds as though there are some elements that would be in line with what the panel recommends, in regard to the point you made about speed. What we're saying is pr