Finance committee  As I think I said in my opening remarks, the single most important thing is actually health policy, because what we're really trying to do here in terms of accelerating the recovery is to get both businesses and households comfortable with the idea that economic activity can resu

Finance committee  No doubt, capital spending is important. It's a determinant of long-term productivity. We have to have a competitive environment. I think that we've seen some of the challenges from jurisdictions like the U.S. that lowered corporate taxes. Canada is reasonably competitive in that

Finance committee  The banks aren't making so much money this year, number one. Banks might like to tell you how well they did, excluding those provisions for potential future loan losses, but those provisions actually count against earnings. First of all, then, this is by no means a banner year fo

Finance committee  I would just echo that. Many countries experimented with similar quantitative easing programs after the 2008 recession. Canada had a milder recession, so we didn't have to do that. None of those countries were left with a legacy of inflation, so while the premise of the question

Finance committee  For now. This is giving the government the opportunity to lock in some fairly good, low rates. Again, none of the countries that did QE ended up with soaring interest rates afterwards, nor did they end up with soaring inflation. By and large, I'd say the Bank of Canada is showing

Finance committee  First of all, getting back to the level of GDP doesn't get you back to the same unemployment rate, because population grows. You actually have to be well above the previous level of GDP. We're going to be in this soup for a while. I think the premise of your question is absolute

Finance committee  That's just mortgages, though.

Finance committee  Banks have lots of other assets, like loans—

Finance committee  I think the silence reflects the fact that we don't run these banks, so we don't always know everything about banking. They don't let me, at least, run the bank. What I would say is that this share has come down substantially. The CMHC, for example, not only used to guarantee m

Finance committee  Thank you so much. I don't think our outlook is materially different from the one we heard right off the top from my friend J.P. at Scotiabank. In fact, I'm often told that there's a lot of uncertainty out there, but this is one of the times in my career when I would say there