Thank you, Chair, and again, welcome to the committee.
It's always great to hear you talk, Mark. It's really interesting for me, coming from Saskatchewan. We're still having trouble finding electricians and plumbers and in locating people. To think there's possibly going to be an impact in Saskatchewan from something going on in Europe or in Greece has a lot of people in my constituency wondering just how that will be the case. Why would it ever impact us? Of course you explained the global economy and how important trade is, and that end of it.
Concerning some of the comments you made about deleveraging in the U.S. and how that's going to have an impact on our economy here in Canada, the joint select committee on deficit reduction in Congress is going to have a report in about a month, talking about trillions in government spending cuts. How will that impact us? Will it impact us? Again, is this the cod liver oil that we have to take right now to be healthy as we move forward? Are we moving through the economic crisis in different stages? Are we at another stage that we're going to progress through until we finally see the light at the end of the tunnel? Where are we on that stage, the period of time in which this drag will affect GDP?
I'll stop there and give you time to answer.