Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Mr. Carney and Mr.Macklem, for appearing again before the finance committee.
I want to talk about two things. I'll get my questions out of the way and I'll let you answer them.
First of all, there has been a clamouring again for a new financial transaction tax. We hear it pretty loudly in Europe. As a matter of fact, I think when I served in industry there were some parties that were advocating for it in Canada as well. I want to know, Mr. Carney, what your thoughts are about that and whether that tax would be able to do the things its advocates claim it would do.
The second thing that concerns me is something that we've touched on briefly with a number of questions, and that is the danger of ongoing deficits. The previous questioner asked about stimulus spending and whether we should be spending more money. What would be the consequences in this country if we engaged in a policy of ongoing deficits? We've targeted 2015 as the time we would wrestle that to the ground. We are now looking 2014. What would be the consequences if we had a policy that allowed for continued deficits?
Those are the two questions, you could say.