Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.
Thank you for the invitation to appear before you today to discuss Canada's economic and fiscal outlook. I am also pleased to highlight some key issues arising from budget 2021, tabled on April 19.
I am joined today by Chris Matier and Trevor Shaw, who will help respond to your questions.
We released our pre-budget outlook on March 31. Our outlook showed a significant improvement in the economy owing to the earlier-than-expected arrival and administration of effective vaccines, higher commodity prices and a stronger U.S. recovery.
While the more recent surge in new COVID-19 infections presents a near-term risk, the resilience and adaptability that the Canadian economy exhibited during the second wave—combined with increased vaccination—should limit the economic impact of the third wave. Nevertheless, we will continue to closely monitor developments.
Our outlook, of course, did not include the new measures that were announced in last week's budget. Nor did it include the up to $100 billion in stimulus spending earmarked in the government's fall economic statement.
Our outlook showed the level of nominal GDP and budgetary revenue returning to their pre-pandemic paths over the medium term. On a status quo basis, we projected the budget deficit to hit 16.5% of GDP, or $363 billion, in 2020-21 and then decline to 0.7% of GDP over the medium term. The federal debt-to-GDP ratio was projected to peak at 49.8% of GDP before gradually declining over the medium term to 45.8% of GDP.
As noted in our report, uncertainty surrounding the outlook remains high. That said, setting aside the government's earmarked stimulus and budget 2021 measures, we judged that risks to our economic and fiscal projections were roughly balanced.
I will now turn to budget 2021.
Key issues in budget 2021, from our perspective, are, first, the fiscal guardrails. In our December report we judged that the $70 billion to $100 billion earmarked in stimulus spending could be miscalibrated if the focus was solely on returning selected labour market indicators to pre-pandemic benchmarks.
Given the improved labour market outlook, our pre-budget report reiterated this assessment. Based on our projection of the guardrail indicators, the government identified in its fall statement, almost all of the ground lost in the labour market due to the pandemic will be made up by the end of 2021-22. To be clear, we're not referring to temporary COVID-19 measures, but rather, as the fall statement indicated, to targeted stimulus to jump-start the economy. Moreover, measurers could be fully justified based on policy objectives other than providing economic stimulus.
In budget 2021 the revision to the private sector economic outlook and fiscal developments provides $109 billion in terms of new fiscal room over six years; that is, before any new measures were introduced, the budget deficit would be over $100 billion lower on a cumulative basis than forecasted in the fall statement.
This new fiscal room is used to finance over three-quarters of the $143 billion in measures detailed in budget 2021. While the budget refers to all these measures as “investments”, $37 billion is tied to COVID-19 spending. Up to $69 billion over the next three fiscal years could be construed as stimulus spending.
Budget 2021 also estimates the economic impact of $126 billion in recovery plan measures over the next three fiscal years. These estimates, however, likely overstate the impact of stimulus spending on the economic outlook presented in budget 2021.
The impact of $25 billion in measures from the fall statement should already be reflected in the March 2021 private sector survey. The recovery plan also includes $32 billion in additional COVID-19 supports, which are not, per se, stimulus measures. Moreover, some of the remaining measures were anticipated by economists and would also be included in their forecasts as the government had clearly signalled its intention to spend $70 billion to $100 billion in the fall statement.
We will be providing our own estimate of the economic impacts of the $69 billion in budget 2021 stimulus spending in a future report.
Finally, concerning the fiscal anchor, budget 2021 sets out a fiscal anchor, which is reducing federal debt as a share of the economy over the medium term and unwinding COVID-19-related deficits.
Over the medium-term horizon, the government projects the federal debt ratio to decline marginally to 49.2% of GDP from a peak of 51.2%, and remain well above its pre-pandemic level of 32.1% of GDP. Long-term projections presented in the budget also show the federal debt ratio remaining above its pre-pandemic level through 2055.
This suggests that the government has decided to effectively stabilize the federal debt ratio at a higher level, potentially exhausting its fiscal room over the medium and long term. This means that any substantial new permanent spending would either lead to an increasing debt-to-GDP ratio, or have to be financed through higher revenues or spending reductions in other areas.
With that, we'll be pleased to respond to your questions.