Government Operations committee  It's income growth that will be lower than it would otherwise have been, so that's what we refer to when we say it's a negative impact. It's not necessarily that their absolute level of income will go down, but the net impact will be a reduction compared to what it would be in a

Government Operations committee  Yes, they'd experience, on average, income growth slightly faster than what will happen with a carbon tax. That's presuming that there would be nothing else that would replace a carbon tax.

Government Operations committee  That's compared to what it would be in a scenario in which there wouldn't be a carbon tax, so it's not necessarily “losing”, but it's lower growth or lower income growth than would otherwise be the case. In that sense, yes, you could categorize it as “losing” compared to what you

Government Operations committee  That's the case for most income quintiles, except for those in the bottom 20% of income quintiles. It varies by province. It depends on the specific economic fabric, income distribution and household composition, but generally speaking, yes.

Government Operations committee  I'm not certain about that. Reducing the carbon tax or eliminating it would certainly have economic impacts, but I'm not convinced that it would do anything with respect to productivity. It's not something that we have looked at—the productivity impact, or not, of a carbon tax. I

Government Operations committee  That's an interesting question, and I'm glad that you're asking me that, because it's a question that gets raised very often. My mandate is to estimate the cost of government proposals. The carbon tax is a government proposal. The cost of climate change is a relatively new area

Government Operations committee  The analysis is typically a cost analysis, which is what I have been mandated by Parliament to do. I'm estimating the cost of proposals. If further analysis is deemed feasible and required, I'm sure there are lots of think tanks out there that are more than happy to do the cost-b

Government Operations committee  When we look at the impact of the fuel charge, we look at the amount that households pay directly—when they fill up their gas tanks or when they heat their houses—and the embedded energy component of the goods or services they buy, and we compare it with the carbon rebate they ge

Government Operations committee  Unfortunately, I don't have these numbers on hand. I remember we conducted a study a few years ago to estimate how much provincial health spending was covered by the Canada Health Transfer. One of the conclusions I remember well was that the definition of health care or health s

Government Operations committee  We don't have that figure either. We may have done the calculations as part of another query. However, we can see that amounts for seniors' benefits will increase by almost $9 billion from 2021‑2022 to 2022‑2023, the year in which eligibility for those aged 75 and over was expan

Government Operations committee  That is a somewhat sensitive question to answer in absolute terms. From a historical perspective, during the 1990s, debt service costs were eating up roughly a third of federal revenues, if not more. That was an alarming situation. It's much less so now, given that it represents

Government Operations committee  That's a good question. Unfortunately, I don't think I'm the best person to tell you how we can achieve those targets or reduce first nations housing needs. You might obtain a better answer, at least I hope so, from the Minister of Indigenous Services.

Government Operations committee  We issued a report on the federal government's housing investments. I believe we also considered the need for water and wastewater systems in first nations communities a few years ago. That said, I'm not sure we've reported specifically on first nations housing. I can provide yo

Government Operations committee  We didn't assess the amounts to see if the contracts awarded externally were good value for taxpayers. What we did find, however, was that spending on external consultants has steadily increased significantly in recent years. Many of these consultants provide services, for exampl

Government Operations committee  I wouldn't go so far as to say that cases like ArriveCAN are widely being repeated everywhere. The questions that arise the most concern the use of consultants to provide policy or management advice to the public service, when there is the expertise within the public service to