Thank you, sir.
In terms of the fundamentals we would be looking at that are behind that statement and that actually provide reason for optimism, actually, in terms of going forward, and which I think the current government and the previous government should take credit for, we have a very strong employment-to-population ratio in Canada right now. We have an unemployment rate, mind you, that's been rising, at 6.6%, but we have a historic high employment-to-population ratio. We have a labour force that, in historic terms, is actually employed. We have key indicators, such as inflation, which erodes consumer purchasing power, effectively at a very comfortable rate of just over 1%, sir. It's a very different experience from what we had during some previous recessions, such as in the early 1980s, when it was climbing up to 13%.
We have financial market indicators as well, such as interest rates, macro-economic interest rates, that are relatively low in historic terms. Canada, unlike some of the other countries, hasn't experienced quite the same bubble types of experiences that are eroding their consumer balance sheets and even their corporate-sector balance sheets as a result of bad loan losses. We're in much healthier shape from that perspective. We look roughly at those balance sheets.
Also, on a fiscal basis, the Canadian government and the provincial governments are much healthier than even our counterparts in the United States. So those are the kinds of indicators we're looking at that are actually behind what we see. We're well positioned going into this downturn period.