Finance committee  Yes.

Finance committee  It's going to be very difficult. I think it would take a dedicated group to study it, first of all by compiling a list of all the subsidies given to corporations and then by looking at those that succeed and pay off and also those that don't. When I started looking into this, I

Finance committee  Thank you for having me back. The federal government currently spends at least $18 billion on corporate subsidies, although the government does not publish easily accessible estimates of how much it allocates. This is equivalent to one-third of all corporate income tax revenues

Finance committee  I agree wholeheartedly, and I underscore the point that it's not just monetary policy that we're starting to run out of bullets with; it's also fiscal policy, because of the accumulated debt. At some point, you can't just look at one sector's debt-to-GDP ratio in isolation. I t

Finance committee  I attach a great deal of importance to it. I think we're at a level of debt to GDP now of over 300%. It's definitely a level at which debt crises tend to occur. We've seen repeatedly within the last decade in the western world that countries with very high levels of debt almost i

Finance committee  Thanks for having me back. I'm the former chief economic analyst at Statistics Canada, so the perspective I bring is one of macroeconomics, the broad trends. I believe there have been two dominant trends in Canada's economy over the past decade, neither of which is discussed eno

Finance committee  One comment I'd make is I would be careful of making comparisons of Canada-U.S. debt figures that only focus on the federal government. It ignores that our federation is a much more decentralized federation. I think these comparisons are much better done at the level of total gov

Finance committee  I'll make a small point. Olivier Blanchard, former chief economist of the IMF, has said that one of the lessons we learned in the 2008 crisis was that levels of debt that seemed sustainable before the crisis suddenly became unsustainable.

Finance committee  Let me dig up my notes on that. Again, I don't want to bore people with an array of statistics, but I looked at the growth of labour income, which is mostly earned income in this country. I looked at disposable income, which is income after taxes and transfers. I also looked at

Finance committee  I'm going to speak as a macro analyst. When I look at the overall performance of the economy over the last four years, it's been largely mediocre. The one exception is 2017 when Canada benefited from a pickup in the global economy, particularly in China and the United States, but

Finance committee  Thanks for having me back. I promise I'll limit my reference to data to the first two paragraphs, so don't be scared that I'm going to drone on with data from my StatsCan days forever. Canada's real GDP fell by 0.1% in February, continuing a weak trend of only 0.1% growth over

Finance committee  Very much so, and I think that didn't happen in the 2008-09 crisis because the government at that time had a lot of capacity to borrow. As we were watching that crisis unfold, we were aware that there were instances, particularly in Britain—and there was some hesitation even in t

Finance committee  I'm sorry if you understood that. I had to say that, compared to the Ontario government, the Couillard government's policies were certainly better and better able to support businesses.

Finance committee  At the same time, it isn't just me. Even with a very low unemployment rate and the elimination of the government's deficit, it's the people of Quebec who chose to vote for change. So, why?

Finance committee  I agree that this government has done some good things.