Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
In my turn, I'm taking the liberty of saying a word to Mr. Poschmann. I did hear his excuses a little earlier, but he knows as well as I do that the document in question is only six pages long. If you look at the header, you see it reads: “C.D. Howe Institute, l'Institut C.D. Howe, celebrating, nous célébrons 50 years, ans”. That's the only bilingual thing in this entire six-page document. In addition, the text was written by a certain Alexandre Laurin. It would not have been very difficult for an institution of your size to have six pages translated, particularly since the clerk explained to you that, out of respect for the two official languages, it is prohibited in our committee to distribute this document, but you did so yourself. I think there is a real problem of respect for the two official languages at the C.D. Howe Institute, and I want to tell you that. It's not that I don't accept the apology you offered earlier, but I myself translated for many years—I was responsible for translating the laws in Manitoba—and I must tell you that it takes very little time to translate six pages. Out of respect for this committee, its members and the two official languages of this country, I believe very seriously that the C.D. Howe Institute could do better than that.
Mr. Hodgson, I wanted to go back to one of your remarks that was very interesting. You just made it incidentally, but I'm beginning to think some attention should be drawn to it. You said that you're not convinced that we're not making mistakes. If I may paraphrase, you said that a lot of solutions had been suggested.This is a bit complicated. An amount of $1,000 billion, which is called a “trillion” in English, and a “billion” in French. In the United States, they've reached $10 trillion in expenditures, to put it in terms that everyone will understand more easily. If I understood correctly, in your presentation, you expressed the fear that we might be doing things today that will cause us other problems later. It's like in stations: one train may conceal another. You try to cross the track and you get hit.
May I ask you to elaborate on your thinking on that subject?