Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to all of our witnesses.
Thank you again, Mr. Page, for bringing your very capable staff with you. We tend to focus our questions on you, so please share the wealth.
I have a very serious question for you. In your opening statement you say there's an 85% chance of probability that the budget will be in deficit in 2015-16 and an 88% chance the budgetary balance in 2015-16 will be lower than $2.6 billion.
I don't watch a lot of television, but there's one cute ad: what are the chances of me being abducted by aliens?
I'm just kidding, of course, but when you put that down in your opening statement, I thought we had to follow up with that.
My sense is, Mr. Page, that you're very close to what our economic fall update actually was. The only difference would be program spending, our track on program spending to yours. We share your fervour, if you will, to make sure we get back to balanced budgets, and we appreciate that comment. But if your projections adopted the same expense track as ours, we would be quite close. I'd be interested in your comments on that.
The one thing I did want to pick up on is that you're recommending the Department of Finance use its own economic forecast in our budget planning process, rather than using these individuals, the 15 private sector advisors, if you will, that we use. This is what we've done since 1994.
In the last budget there was a spread of $100 billion in projected GDP. We're down to a $50 billion spread. So volatility is very important when we're looking at those kinds of spreads.
This forecasting process—gathering information, if you will—was recommended by Ernst & Young in 1994. O'Neill Strategic Economics reaffirmed the method in 2005, and the method has actually been supported by the IMF. What are your reasons for suggesting this should be done only within the Department of Finance and that we shouldn't be speaking to the experts outside the department?