Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for inviting me.
I do not want to repeat my colleagues' remarks, but I would like to reinforce what François has just said. Canada is not an island. What happens elsewhere is very important for Canada. But, in 2009 and in 2010, we still performed very well, better than our neighbours and better than Europe.
We had a very effective monetary policy and good fiscal support. As a result, consumption was really pushed to the maximum. Domestic demand, or consumption, especially in housing, was what really took the sting out of the recession in 2009 and 2010. I think we pushed the area to the maximum. Levels of debt are very high.
As Mr. Carney also mentioned in his speech in Windsor last week, from now on, future growth in consumption expenses in Canada, housing included, should be at more or less the same level as the growth in income. We can therefore no longer continue to sustain a growth in expenses that by far outstrips income growth, or, in other words, an increase in debt. Private debt, household debt, should now stabilize and level off. In the future, consumption will be a much smaller contributor to overall growth.
Exports are therefore becoming an important engine of growth in Canada. Unfortunately, as has already been mentioned here, foreign attitudes in that area, especially in the United States, our biggest trading partner, are none too pleasant, at least in the short term, for 2011 and 2012.
So that is the environment we are in and we have to face up to it. I think that we in Canada are in a period of economic growth between 2% and 2.5% in real terms at most. Inflation is very low, perhaps 1%. So there is a nominal growth in GDP from which come government revenues of 3.5% to 4% at best. When we do our fiscal planning, that is what we have to work with.
That is all for the moment, thank you.