Finance committee  Just to clarify, it is an impact of 0.1%, but it's a percentage point on real GDP growth per year. Over a five-year period, at the end, the level of real GDP would be 0.5% lower. That's considering a scenario with the federal plan in place, let's say, versus a scenario without any carbon pricing in the economy.

Finance committee  Those are the contributions to real GDP growth from the export sector. Actual export volumes are growing faster than that, but that's the actual impact on the headline “Real GDP Growth” numbers. You're correct, though, that we have fairly solid growth up until 2020 and then the decline after that.

Finance committee  Sorry, as Yves said, I'm not very good with on-the-fly simple arithmetic, but it looks to be below 10%. It's probably, I would guess, around 7% of total expenses.

Finance committee  As Yves mentioned, we don't provide a forecast of it, but we have been tracking the quarterly data published by Statistics Canada, and we saw throughout 2018 a probably average performance, I would say. Initially there were some concerns, earlier on, about the tax changes made in the U.S. and about some investment probably being shifted out, but based on the data at least to date, I don't think we've really seen that materialize.

Finance committee  Two factors inform our outlook for the household debt to income ratio being relatively stable over the projection. We see the increase in interest rates that is going to help slow borrowing, but we also see the moderation in economic growth, so income growth will be slowing. It's really these two factors, as well as a slower growth rate of real housing prices.

Finance committee  Again, I think the question is focused on whether you're looking at it from a fiscal sustainability perspective, or you're looking at it in terms of economic capacity and private sector job growth. I think the question really has to be focused along those lines. In terms of overall sustainability in the government sector, part of those high debt loads in the public sector could be captured indirectly through the risk premium that a government would have to pay in financial markets.

Finance committee  Sure, I'll follow up with a little more technical detail that can address your second question. Our projection is model-based, so we have an estimated macro-model, in conjunction with assumptions and outlooks for the U.S. economy and commodity prices. These are key inputs. This contrasts with the Department of Finance's approach, which uses a survey of 15 or so private sector forecasters to prepare its outlook.

Finance committee  [Inaudible--Editor].

Finance committee  We haven't decomposed where that decline is coming from, so we would have to look more closely at the different age groups, gender groups, and sectoral composition. We really haven't looked at it. We just looked at a higher level, the aggregate level, and accounted for that decline.

Finance committee  Yes, that's reflecting a few factors. First of all, it's really the slowdown in foreign activity, so the U.S. demand for our exports. If you refer back to the slide, figure 4, you'll see that the U.S. economy is slowing down to about 1.8% in the medium term, so the growth in our exports would be roughly in line with the U.S. economy at that time.

Finance committee  I'll start, and my colleague Tim will probably follow up. You're correct. Our outlook is a bit more negative than, let's say for instance, the Bank of Canada's outlook, where I think they probably have it making a zero contribution to GDP over that period. Our view really is that the impact of rising interest rates and the slowdown in disposable income in the economy will hit the housing sector a bit more directly and significantly than others.

Transport committee  We don't have specific estimates of that, but in our economic impact assessments we have taken account of inflation picking up, and of those inflation-adjusted dollars. Even though it's $187 billion now, over a shorter time period, it's less than that, and the economic impacts would take that into account.

Transport committee  The main reason those impacts are so much lower than initially presented in budget 2016 is simply that less than half of that money—it looks like—actually appeared in the time frame that it was planned for, so in 2016–17 and in 2017–18. Another reason is that, at the time of budget 2016, the economy was operating well below its capacity, and at the time interest rates were lower and, therefore, if the planned amount of money had been spent, those impacts would have been larger and would have been in line both with estimates that Finance Canada presented in budget 2016 and with our estimates that we had at that time too.

Finance committee  It's a really good question because I think it ties naturally into our fiscal sustainability report where we look out over the long term so we're able to see the impacts of population aging and the OAS and elderly benefits programs. We project a sizeable increase in them relative to the size of the economy out to its peak in 2032 or so.

Finance committee  I apologize if I misspoke. I didn't mean to say that the federal government was facing a fiscal crisis going ahead because of rising debt charges. If anything, even though we are projecting an increase in the level of public debt charges, these are manageable within the government's current fiscal policy.