Sir, in the context of fiscal sustainability, when we look forward, we look at how aging demographics will impact on the provinces as well as the federal government. In the report that we provided at the end of September, we break out where we think all the key spending components are. We do projections that look at impacts of demographics, potential enrichment, and other cost factors.
In that context, when we look at the fiscal gap as a result of aging demographics, we're saying roughly something in the neighbourhood of 2.7 percentage points of GDP, roughly equally balanced as we kind of go forward in terms of dealing with the demographic issue.
I think it's true that we have certain provinces right now that are under more fiscal strain than others, and certainly under potentially more fiscal strain than the federal government. When we look at the fiscal sustainability now, trying to stabilize both, we're talking about a gap of 2.7 percentage points. That's quite significant.
It's less significant than what some other countries are experiencing, like the U.S. and the U.K. on a fiscal sustainability basis. Again, this analysis is provided for all other countries, but it's balanced between the two. So we have fiscal holes or fiscal gaps at both levels.
