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

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  I don't think we're at the stage yet of discussing increases in taxation, but I think we will soon be at the stage of discussing cuts in programs in order to reduce deficits, particularly provincially but also potentially federally. You can balance the books two ways. You can i

Finance committee  Certainly in terms of international tax havens, they exist because we allow them to exist. We allow them to exist in the sense that we don't require corporate entities operating in Canada to disclose where they declare profits, where they make revenue or where they employ people

Finance committee  Excellent. Thank you, Mr. Easter. I hope everyone can hear me. Thanks so much to the committee for the invitation today. Certainly, the economic response to COVID-19 from the government has been unprecedented in Canadian history. We'd need to look back at the World Wars to see