Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Carney and Mr. Jenkins, for joining us once again here this morning.
We seem to be focusing so much on forecasts and not enough on reality. But having said that, I think both this government and you, Mr. Carney, have been criticized regarding forecasts. In fact, my learned colleague Mr. McCallum commented in the first part of January that the government had overstated the risks, suggesting that most experts were predicting a 2.5% growth rate, and then in November he said that we were understating the risks. So I guess I'm confused here. And we had a very interesting comment from the parliamentary budget officer, who suggested that being an economist was a humbling occupation—and I would tend to agree with him.
Not very many people saw this coming, if anyone. Why is that? Do we not understand the situation? Do we not understand what has an impact on the economy as much as we should or could? Or is it all just as you stated in your second paragraph, “the speed and synchronized nature of the recent global downturn”? Did it catch us all off-guard?