Clément Gignac from Quebec.

Welcome to our witness. Thank you for being with us. I have read part of your book. I found it very interesting, Mr. Green. You mentioned basic income in your opening remarks. If I go to your conclusion on page 218, it states that basic income could simplify the system of income and could be easier to access than the existing program. You mentioned that it comes with a cost, and you conclude by saying that a simpler system could mean fewer specialized programs to address particular needs, and, in some aspects, they have some people who stay behind.

Could you give me two or three examples where going with basic income is worse than staying with the current program, for example, or group of people? You seem to refer to a particular situation.

To change topics, the timing is good to have you here today because of the detailed P.E.I. report from this working group that my colleague mentioned. It seems very attractive. You mentioned that you would have 65% fewer children in poverty and 90% fewer people living alone.

I don’t know if you had any time today to look at that report that was released, but is it fair to say that conclusion could apply to the rest of Canada — from coast to coast — if we were to go with the national program, and that you would see a significant decline in poverty if we have a national basic income? Is it fair to conclude that based on that report and your own experience?

Regarding the Parliamentary Budget Officer, or PBO, report, I am just trying to understand the rule of thumb. It seems that there are savings from red tape and administrative savings. They have so many programs that if they merge or disappear, you can save a lot of money. It seems to be 10% of the overall cost.

Is it a rule of thumb that, yes, you will save on administrative costs, but it’s actually equivalent to 10% of the price tag of a basic income?

Mr. Giroux, welcome, and thank you for joining us on such short notice. We always appreciate it. I must take advantage of your presence here the day after the Fall Economic Statement was presented to ask you my first question on that subject. I will come back to the subject of our meeting, the Supplementary Estimates (B), when I ask my second question.

Were you surprised by the deficit figures yesterday? The economists were all expecting something on the order of $45 billion to $46 billion, which is the magnitude you had predicted; yet here we are with $40 billion. I’ve covered public finance for years, if not decades. Sometimes there are accounting entries or things that are somewhat unusual. Have you noticed anything out of the ordinary, or is it just that we’re working with different economic assumptions?

I was thinking about one thing in particular: I’m talking about the $5.2 billion reduction in expenditures attributable to accelerated recovery by the Canada Revenue Agency. That’s $5 billion more than forecast in the spring. Until your next meeting or release, I’d like to know more about the Canada Revenue Agency, which is suddenly going to collect $5 billion more than forecast five months ago.

My next question is about Supplementary Estimates (B). You can see that 40% of the proposed spending in Supplementary Estimates (B) is for the Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs portfolio. That’s really quite significant.

However, in all the economic statements that we have looked at, this is the first time I’ve seen what last year’s deficit would have been if we hadn’t made all these investments. I’m not questioning the merits of this portfolio, but I read in the appendix that the deficit for 2022-23 would have been $9 billion rather than $35 billion. That’s quite considerable.

Is it a five-year time frame? Would we have a balanced budget if we did this exercise? Now they’re saying that the liability is about $76 billion for investments in truth and reconciliation. In your future analyses, could you shed some light on the impact of all this? I’m trying to see what’s recurring and what’s not. That would help us understand the underlying deficit.