Finance committee  This is Philip Cross. Could I ask the chair's indulgence to make one last point?

Finance committee  Thank you. In reply to Mr. Cooper's question about Britain, I must say I misunderstood it. I interpreted it as a follow-up to the nuts and bolts of getting money out, and I don't have any understanding of that in Britain. I understand now that what he was referring to was how B

Finance committee  As a general rule, using existing mechanisms always beats setting up a new program. For the six-week rollout for CERB, based on recent experience with the federal government, including the way it has failed to pay its own employees, it would be optimistic to say that it would be

Finance committee  I think that, after this crisis ends, we should be using every and any tool we can to get economic growth going. I'm quite concerned, as the representative from the hotel industry said, that some sectors are going to recover very slowly. This has obviously been a big hit to the e

Finance committee  I think it is curious. I think the number one problem of the business sector these days is conserving enough cash so that they can survive until we traverse this unusual disruption. I don't think it's just the carbon tax. I don't know why we would be collecting the GST. We're div

Finance committee  One thing that was striking in the response of the federal government to this crisis was how initially all of the focus was on workers. Of course, workers are important, but what almost seemed to be forgotten initially and was then just an afterthought was that we have to make su

Finance committee  I can hear you. I don't know if you can hear me.

Finance committee  Okay. I was just at the last paragraph anyway. So far we are not repeating one lingering problem from the 2008-09 crisis, where rescue packages for banks and quantitative easing favoured the wealthy and helped to widen income inequality, especially in the U.S. and Europe. The po

Finance committee  Sure, that's a question that's been asked a lot over the last decade. We saw in the 2008-09 crisis, for example, that there were large increases in debt but not necessarily in the money supply. The two can be separate things. The danger is that if the credit markets are unwilling

Finance committee  Thank you. It's always a pleasure to speak in front of this committee. We are living through the fastest-moving crisis of our time, surpassing previous shocks such as the 1998 ice storm, the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the great financial crisis of 2008. It is worth recalling th

Finance committee  Hello. I'm Philip Cross, senior fellow at the MLI. I'm calling from here in Ottawa.

Finance committee  I would tend to put Trans Mountain in the category of Hibernia and General Motors, as subsidies to businesses during an exceptional time of crisis. It's likely to pay off in the longer term. I think the business case was there, as Dr. Mintz mentioned. It was a victim of regulat

Finance committee  There's not a lot.

Finance committee  The brief answer—I know you're pressed for time—is to start with an accounting of all the subsidies made and then try as best you can to come up with the overall rate of return. As Jack suggested, some of these have clearly paid off. I noted some of the winners myself, but a lot

Finance committee  Maybe I'll start. I'll be very short because I want Jack to have as much time as possible, since he's much more authoritative on this and most other points on economics that I am. What's the public perception? The NDP first raised this as a major national issue, I believe, in th