Human Resources committee  The numbers can get very large like that. It depends on the particular amounts, but $2,000 a month times 30 million adults is $60 billion a month. If you multiply that by 12, you get numbers that are very big. Those numbers get very challenging. There are other ways one can thin

Human Resources committee  Tax rates for many Canadian families are more in the range of, at the federal level, 25% or 30%. You would get back some of that if you were to pay out these kinds of very large cheques to everyone. You would get some of that back through the tax system; that is clear. You could

Human Resources committee  Yes, it's right that it would cost a lot. Even if you were to set some threshold of $100,000 or $150,000 where you would claw back all this extra benefit, most Canadian families don't earn that much. You would still have a lot of money going out and that clawback wouldn't actuall

Human Resources committee  There are as many as there are different economists or people who dream different ways of doing this. There are many different ways, but I think what's important is to look at the bottom line, which is that we want to try to reduce poverty. We want to try to support family income

Human Resources committee  I think it is clear that replacing family incomes that dropped because of the crisis was the right way to go. It was a more efficient way of delivering income to families that needed it.

Human Resources committee  I think we have to start planning that transition.

Human Resources committee  When I'm thinking of different models of universal basic income, what I find interesting is that in some of the models where you do cut a cheque to everyone, most of the dollars end up going to families who are not in poverty. That's why I think the programs that focus first on t

Human Resources committee  That's an idea that's been floated. I think a very narrow slice of people would benefit. At the same time, I don't think it hurts the government's revenues very much, because the money does get paid back. If it doesn't get paid back, there's a penalty, as with the homebuyers' pla

Human Resources committee  Sure. That's something we saw in the package that was announced for seniors, a boost to low-income seniors through the OAS and GIS programs, which I think was appropriate. If you were to add into that something to allow people to access the liquidity they have in their RRSP, to m

Human Resources committee  I think the contention is right. The uptake of the wage subsidy has been lower than most people expected to see. I think the main reason is that it was slower to get into place, and many businesses had to make a decision of how to lay off their workers. Instead of laying them off

Human Resources committee  It's hard to predict the future, especially in this crisis. What I do hope to see over the summer is that businesses here in B.C. and in other places start to hire back their workers, that we will see that case load on the emergency benefit going down and there be more workers on

Human Resources committee  I can't hazard a guess as to what percentage. However, I do know that with regard to the kind of freeze that we have seen the economy experience in March, April and May, there are clear signs that we are coming out of it in the labour market, in other kinds of indicators of econo

Human Resources committee  I think that we need to start planning for a transition out of the emergency response benefit. Mr. Albas is right. If you were to make a program like the CERB permanent, that costs us about $15 billion a month. That would be $180 billion a year, so the idea of making this a perma

Human Resources committee  Thank you for your question. I will, if you'll allow, answer in English. As we move forward into the phase of the crisis where we are looking at returning to work, my view is that for those who have lost work, especially those who are self-employed, the part-time worker who may

Human Resources committee  It totally depends on what kind of model you had in mind. If it were to be a $2,000 cheque to each adult and there are 30 million adults in Canada, that would be $60 billion a month multiplied by 12 months. You'd get into numbers that are astronomical. Of course, one could try t