Thank you, and thank you, Mr. Marston.
I'm going to take the next round as the chair.
Governor, I want to ask you a couple of broad questions. The first is on the impact on our inflation target of the decision by the chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve to set the target very low over the next several years. I know it's conditional, but it seems to me that their low target makes it somewhat more challenging for us on our inflation target and for the value of the Canadian dollar.
You talked about a third point in your opening statement, personal indebtedness, and I'm glad you did. The point has been made that in terms of raising our rates, we're obviously somewhat limited by the actions in the U.S., and when you keep rates that low, you almost incentivize people to borrow more and may thereby increase the problem of personal indebtedness. This is something you've warned about, and the finance minister has as well.
That's my first issue.
The second one was raised by Mr. Marston and the finance minister. The finance minister was very pointed in saying to this committee to advise businesses to spend more, and I'm glad he did so. A challenge here in Canada, and even more so in the U.S., is that in a sense companies are sitting on capital. What is your analysis as to exactly why they're doing that? Is there anything we should be looking at from a policy point of view to incentivize them to invest and to spend some of that capital?