Finance committee  There were few conditions, as there are this time around, in terms of accessing some of those supports. The programs were actually, in some ways, quite similar: the Bank of Canada, particularly, engaging in large-scale repo operations with the banks; CMHC itself engaging in mort

Finance committee  The deferral program itself is premised on OSFI's exemption of banks in terms of increased.... What would have otherwise happened is that these loans would have been considered non-performing. The moment they become non-performing, all of a sudden the banks need to put up more,

Finance committee  Do you mean the conditions during 2008 or conditions during the present—

Finance committee  Thanks so much for the question. Certainly the Bank of Canada has always been engaged in buying some portion of federal government debt. That's ranged from about 5% in the 1980s to about 15% recently. It was as high as 25% in the 1970s. Given the recent purchases by the Bank of

Finance committee  Raw numbers. Yes, sir.

Finance committee  The maximum insurance in force allowed through CMHC is just over $700 billion on residential mortgages. The total residential mortgage value in Canada is roughly $1.2 trillion. This isn't a bank-by-bank breakdown, but seven divided by 12 is your ratio.

Finance committee  I do want to revise my earlier statement. I have, in fact, looked it up. At the end of the first quarter of 2020, 30% of all mortgages in Canada were insured by the federal government, by CMHC. In any event, to your point, Mr. Poilievre, the higher debt is primarily held by youn

Finance committee  Thanks so much for that, Mr. Chair, and thanks so much to the committee for their invitation to speak today. First of all, I would like to congratulate the federal government on its reaction to this crisis, and in particular on the creation of the emergency benefit. It was certa

Finance committee  On the transparency, I think it is important, certainly for larger businesses—I mean for a $100-billion program—that we have a decent idea. If a business is over a particular size, you know, you could evaluate that, say, on the revenue that the government disclosed that they rece

Finance committee  It sounds like this is exactly what the program was designed for. It was to help businesses, which would have laid their employees off, to hire them back. Well, in a sense hire them back—the federal government is paying the payroll—but it's connected to the companies for which th

Finance committee  It is fairly incredible that 5.5 million applications could have been processed in two weeks. It does speak, I think, to the need that Canadians have for this type of support. I don't think the labour force survey fully captured that when it came out today. I think we'll see how

Finance committee  I was just going to say that in terms of interest rates, I certainly think that targeting credit cards and payday loans, in particular, to substantially reduce their rates would be most beneficial. For mortgages, it's much less. The interest rates there are already very low. If

Finance committee  I would state that the CERB, while closing in on a universal benefit, is not yet a universal benefit, given some of the constraints. For instance, March 15 was the point at which you had to become unemployed in order to access it. Another constraint was the requirement for $5,000

Finance committee  I can definitely do that, Mr. Chair. Thank you. In terms of the wage subsidy, I think it is clear, but unless the federal government is clear that companies are not going to be paying out dividends and conducting share buy-backs, inevitably you will have bad actors in the same w

Finance committee  It would appear that the position the banks appear to be taking at this point is the deferral one that we were discussing earlier, potentially the deferral of interest. It's not the deferral of payments for individual mortgages. There does also seem to be a push to lower interest