Agriculture committee  Yes. My approach focuses on the macro, not the micro, and doing what's called indirect regulation rather than direct regulation. Let's bring that down to brass tacks and down to earth. The Competition Bureau, which has correctly identified concentration, has not acknowledged ful

Agriculture committee  I was listening to the conversation in the previous round and this round, and I'm going to answer it tangentially. To provide full disclosure, I believe in Pigou taxes. I'm referring to Professor Pigou of Cambridge from 100 years ago, who said that if you want to discourage somet

Agriculture committee  Thank you, Mr. Perron. I'm not a libertarian who says there's no role for government. My late father had 43 years in the Government of Canada and half of my family work in the government. The Government of Canada is one of the most qualified, highly trained and skilled governme

Agriculture committee  I have just two sentences left. The lines were very long and the food was disgusting. Why? Prices were set by the state with no understanding of marginal costs because of the conceit—that's Nobel laureate von Hayek's word—of politicians and bureaucrats who thought they knew more

Agriculture committee  Thank you, Chair. The first of my disclosures is that I don't belong to or donate money to any political party. Second, I'm a tenured prof, paid by Carleton for 37 years, teaching the strategy capstone course that evaluates competitiveness and value creation of industries and fi

Finance committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I want to thank the finance committee for inviting me to discuss what I believe is one of the most important public policy problems facing Canada today. First are my disclosures. I don't belong to or donate money to any political party or allow

Finance committee  Well, of course, because we're talking about the problem of housing today. As you've already heard from the other panellists, we have a problem with housing. Whether the figure is CHMC's 2.5 million or 3.2 million, we have an enormous supply shortage. Second, because of the land

Finance committee  Yes, and I don't want to leave the impression that I don't think the Competition Bureau is doing a great job. I think they are.

Finance committee  They're doing a fabulous job. However, that's the sort of.... Those kinds of anti-competitive practices are what should be pulled out, banned and abolished. Absolutely.

Finance committee  It's Ian Lee.

Finance committee  Okay. I'll be very quick. I talk about this in my classes. I don't think anyone should deny the Pigou tax. Professor Pigou created the idea of putting a tax on something. Make it more expensive, and we consume less of it. That's a Pigou tax—a carbon tax, a cigarette tax or an al

Finance committee  There are 330 million...and they are the largest, most productive and most dynamic economy in the world. China is actually declining as a percentage of U.S. GDP. Europe is declining. People don't realize that. The United States keeps getting bigger, larger and more competitive, a

Finance committee  Yes, I do, and so do many people. I mean, deficits are by definition stimulative, regardless of—again—the motive. It doesn't matter what you claim your motive is; deficits inject money into the economy. There's a metaphor I like to use. I was a caregiver for my late remarkable m

Finance committee  This is an excellent metaphor. Monetary and fiscal policy should be operating in concert. When we go into a recession, if we stimulate through driving down interest rates and running up deficits, they're in concert, but right now we're trying to cool down the economy because th

Finance committee  I do remember the MURBs, because I financed some way back when. This was in the late 1970s and early 1980s. I can't remember the details now at all, I assure you, but they were very popular and they were used widely. It shows that incentives work. When you provide incentives like