Finance committee  That's a good question. I suppose a very broad answer to that from the economist camp would be to make sure that you have a tax system that reflects the price of carbon, and if you have that, then in principle, with the prices of the goods and services, people are incentivized to turn towards greener products.

Finance committee  It's in principle what you already have. You have a carbon price system, so in principle it's already happening.

Finance committee  Yes. At some point, once recovery is really solidly under way, then all of the attention should go back to prioritizing some reduction in public debt. The extent to which active measures may be needed to bring that down will depend on the speed of recovery. If you have a sufficiently strong economic recovery and tax revenues come back rapidly, it might be that your deficits reach levels at which you're going to get reductions in the debt burden without having to make stringent cuts to public spending and so on.

Finance committee  It's good to have a forward-looking plan that says we aim to contain public debt in this way. For instance, we could say that we aim to bring the net debt-to-GDP ratio to x in the next 10 years.

Finance committee  I think it's doing reasonably well, to be honest. Some OECD countries that are extremely reliant on tourism, such as Greece and so on, are really struggling, and there are some regions within Europe that are having a very, very tough time with these hard-hit sectors. There is also a bit of uncertainty.

Finance committee  Yes, sure.

Finance committee  I think sometimes people talk about slightly different things when they talk about guaranteed income—

Finance committee  They do, a little bit, yes. The absolutely pure idea of it is that absolutely everybody gets the same amount of money, without any withholding of it depending on income. In practical terms, when this is talked about in Canadian policy circles, you actually talk about a system under which this income is withdrawn as you have your own earnings, and that's really a lot more like traditional social welfare, you know.

Finance committee  I will say straight off that I am not a tax expert, and so I really wouldn't like to speak for my colleagues in our tax department on whether Canada is a laggard. It's a very technical area. If you want to write to me, I can put you in touch with someone and you can talk to them.

Finance committee  I don't have a very precise answer. Of course, in principle, it looks very much like the U.S. stimulus package will provide a lift to Canada's economy, principally through exports. I guess, as we've been talking a little bit about tourism, one issue there is that it depends to what extent people will be able to move around.

Finance committee  I'm not an expert on this, I will say straight off. I just look at the available data, as I suppose many people do. It looks as though Canada had a slowish start, but now, in terms of the daily vaccination numbers, it's moving up the ranking, so to speak. Clearly it's an improved situation, but I wouldn't really want to comment a huge amount on that, as I'm not an epidemiologist.

Finance committee  It's important. Canadian governments have been trying to improve the availability of affordable child care for many years. There has been some progress, but it does look like there's still work to do, and our report emphasizes that. It's great that the problem is recognized, and it seems quite widely, but it just needs more work.

Finance committee  Certainly what our report aims to emphasize is that, as I've said, the key thing right now is to keep these supplementary forms of support to households and businesses going while the economy is fragile. While there are people struggling, you need these extra support schemes, but it's true that the pandemic does also give us some opportunities.

Finance committee  I'm sorry. All right.

Finance committee  I would agree with this in principle, but I can't think of a specific example of Canadian policy myself. Maybe you have some.