Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good morning Mr. Page, and members of your team. As a first comment, I wish to tell you that my party, the Bloc Québécois, considers your role and work to be extremely important. This allows you to have access to data and information that are extremely important for sound management and democracy.
You are Canada's parliamentary budget officer. We are in a recession, the country is experiencing a significant situation. I am sure you read the newspapers, and that you are certainly aware that south of the border, in the United States, a severe recession is underway and that measures of a greater order of magnitude have been announced by the new President of the United States. According to analyses done to date, Minister Flaherty's budget contains measures that represent perhaps one fifth of those adopted by the United States.
In your opinion, to what extent could Canada move out of this recession notwithstanding what is going on in the United States? Will Canada survive even if the U.S. stimulus package fails?