Finance committee  Certainly the impact was pretty immediate on oil and gasoline prices. It may well have an impact on food prices, although that's potentially longer term, via wheat and fertilizer markets in particular. It's not entirely clear what the impact of that will be.

Finance committee  The federal government doesn't control the price of oil or gasoline. Those are controlled by international markets. That's not to say we can't control, to some degree, our own supply chain and personal transportation reliance on gasoline. That's not something that changes overni

Finance committee  Yes. All the major federal income transfer programs are indexed. That's not necessarily true provincially. I think the only area where federal benefits are not indexed is on reserve, where the on-reserve social assistance matches what the provinces are providing, which is somet

Finance committee  Federally, we have a basic income system for seniors via the old age security and guaranteed income supplement. We have a system for families with children via the Canada child benefit. But we really have no institutional supports for adults who don't fit either of those two cate

Finance committee  Thank you. I’d like to thank the committee for the invitation to speak to you today on this pressing issue of inflation. While there were clear inflationary pressures in late 2021, the situation has gotten much worse with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Despite this, inflation

Finance committee  Yes, of course there's always a focus on attempting to cut back government spending. Often that will kick the problem to some other part of the Canadian economy, whether the provinces or households, which then have to deal with that debt because health care costs are rising or so

Finance committee  Certainly when it comes to CERB repayment, it was an unfortunate feature that at the start of the pandemic, Canadians were encouraged to apply for the CERB and receive that benefit if they needed it, and many of them have been pursued as a result of this, which is unfortunate. Pa

Finance committee  Yes, that's quite right. This will certainly involve staffing. It might also involve capital. This might have to do with large build-outs of long-term care such that we don't have four people in a room, we have one or two people in a room. Even if you don't have the means to pa

Finance committee  It's more that the funding be tied to the national standards so that we're evaluating on a regular basis whether the standards are being obtained and whether the funding is commensurate with that. Obviously this would be in negotiation with the provinces. You'd expect the provi

Finance committee  It's important that the federal government in essence know what it's buying. The federal government is coming to the table with a certain amount of money and it's buying something. It's working with the provinces on something that's measurable. There's a new investment being made

Finance committee  That's right.

Finance committee  Quite a variety of care standards exist at the provincial level. What's needed is to start setting some national standards, not only national standards without money but national standards with money from the federal government so that it's quite clear what the federal government

Finance committee  Thanks so much for the question. There are really two sides to this. One has been the increasing activity of real estate investment trusts in buying up traditional purpose-built housing with the goal of maximizing profits from those assets, as opposed to maintaining tenants in t

Finance committee  Yes. Certainly, in terms of a land and existing assets acquisition fund, we're recommending a fund of $340 million a year. This would be partially offset by the removal of the real estate investment trust tax preference, which allows the pass-through of profits that investors can

Finance committee  Certainly when it comes to coverage of workers in the omicron wave and in future waves, this isn't necessarily the federal government's fault but there is this ongoing problem of paid sick leave, particularly for low-income workers. This is not just generally provincial policy. T