Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Alexander, let's talk about household debt, because I found what you wrote on the website www.consensuseconomics.com to be very insightful.
Allow me to provide you with some context. I am currently reading the French translation of a book by Esther Duflo called Poor Economics: A radical rethinking of the way to fight global poverty. Ms. Duflo is a Franco-American economist who advises President Obama from within the President's Global Development Council. The American magazine Foreign Policy named her one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers.
You wrote the following:With a relatively muted pace of income growth for middle-income Canadians over the last decade, combined with a falling interest rate environment, it is perhaps unsurprising that many middle-income families may have turned to debt financing in order to bridge the gap between themselves and wealthier Canadians.
Moreover, in her book, Ms. Duflo puts a lot of emphasis on people's behaviour rather than proposing models for people to adhere to.
Could you shed some light on this need to understand what motivates people to act the way they do, for example in the case of taking on debt?