You don't really want me to answer that penny question. It's not our domain--it's that of the government and the minister--but our research indicates that we would not expect an inflationary or dis-inflationary effect from the elimination of the penny. So rounding up or rounding down will have no impact. It's not going to affect the 2% target.
On the 50 basis point adjustment we made last week, given the amount of time I would say a couple of things.There have been two major shocks to the global economy that have implications for Canada, and my colleague referenced them earlier. There has been the slowdown in the United States and turbulence in the financial markets. When we acted on March 4, we highlighted the downside risks that importantly included those two shocks.
With further information and developments, when we took our decision and published this associated report, we incorporated those shocks fully into our base case projection. So the projection you see and the numbers we quote are balanced.The risks are on the upside, the risks are on the downside, as opposed to a projection where there are a lot of downside risks--which is where we would have been in March.
So that's an important thing to understand. We've incorporated things. We've had time to work it through. We've calibrated accordingly. As we say, further stimulus will depend on the evolution of the global economy and domestic demand.