Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Kevin.
I feel that I can perhaps call you by your first name. We see you often enough that we're almost on a first-name basis now.
Thanks to your colleagues who've joined you here this morning.
I might suggest that you need to have a chat with whoever does your scheduling. I understand that from here you run right to a Senate committee hearing. You should space those out a little bit to give yourself a breather in between.
You absolutely do good work and we do appreciate it at this committee. We look at some of the critiques of what we're doing, and I think everyone understands that we're caught up in a global recession, and we're doing the best we can. I see your comments that we appear to be emerging from a difficult recession and the average private sector outlook is stabilizing, although uncertainty remains, and I guess that's the key: uncertainty.
When I talk to my constituents, they're not so hung up on the numbers as they are about the outcome. They ask if we're going to see an end to this recession and they ask if this government has a plan. I think what we see reflected in all of these reports and in your analysis of the report is that there is a fragile movement toward recovery.
Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of Canada, in answer to a question the other day, said that:
...definitions of recession and recovery based simply on GDP are a little unrepresentative. There are broader factors like industrial production, unemployment, etc. I think in the fullness of this experience of the recession and the recoveries, and the amount of time it takes for economies to return to their previous path of potential growth, it is likely that Canada will return to its path of potential more quickly than the other crisis-affected economies, including the two European countries you mentioned. But that's something one sees over the fullness of time, and that's what ultimately will matter.
The key is “and that's what will ultimately matter”.
Do you agree with the governor's comments, Mr. Page?