Certainly.
Thank you again for your support. At the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer we certainly see our role as supporting all parliamentarians, all of Parliament, all parties. When we do our work in the context of independence, we see us supporting Canadians in that context as well, as you've said.
In terms of where we get our numbers, sir, it partly depends on the nature of the work we're doing, but in the context of what we're talking about today--economic and fiscal analysis and projections--we use techniques very similar to those that are used by the Department of Finance. In fact, a large number of our team members who are responsible for the forecasts we're preparing and putting forth for you have worked at the Department of Finance for many years, including Mostafa Askari, Chris, and me. In fact, Mostafa and Chris were the senior chief economists for forecasting at the finance department for a number of years.
Very briefly, finance actually prepares its forecasts based on average private sector forecasts, with the transparency in those, and the five-year projections. They reconcile their projections in the budget, with changes from forecast to forecast. That kind of transparency is actually an international best practice. We like best practices. We've actually copied to a large degree their best practice.
We do our own surveys, sir. The finance department surveys 18 private sector forecasts on the economy and the outlook for the next five years. We don't have access to their 18. We actually survey 11. So we have a sample somewhat smaller, in the nature of a dozen. Based on those projections, we actually use an econometric model very much like the one the Department of Finance uses, which we've all used in the past. We've actually used one from a firm in Toronto. We kind of tune the model, so to speak, so it can help us with the fiscal forecast. We've built in what we need to have to prepare fiscal forecasts for you for analysis.
We'll also provide you with different scenarios, very much like the finance department would. Having worked at the Department of Finance, we can tell you that they need to give you the best-case average scenario. We will also give you a sense of the low and the high. We certainly did that going into November, because we saw the broad range. We did that as well just prior to the budget. So if you take the low projection, we'll give you a sense of what that means fiscally. We're not saying that it's necessarily going to be the scenario; we just want to attune you to this uncertainty. And just to underscore your point, there is significant uncertainty.
Forecasting is a very humbling profession to be involved in. We don't do it because we want to do it. We do it because we need a framework. We don't do it in the sense that we want to measure ourselves vis-à-vis some other private sector forecasters and say our forecasts are better. We want to give you a framework you can do budget planning on. In this environment, when we don't know how deep the recession is going to be, we want to give you a sense of risk, a sense of how big that could be in order to kind of facilitate your debate. That's what we're really effectively trying to do, sir.