Thank you for the question.
Absolutely you are correct in the sense that there have been some imbalances or disparities in economic growth. That's frequently the case. In an expansion or in a recession and subsequent recovery, some sectors are affected differentially. Particularly in Canada one of the most important impacts obviously has been the structure of global demand and particularly demand for Canadian exports.
As is referenced in the report, foreign activity, which is an aggregate measure of foreign demand—demand in the United States and across the emerging world, the demand that matters most for Canadian goods—has been particularly weak in the recession period, and its recovery has been relatively weak. I'll give you one example, which is that of the U.S. housing sector. At its peak that sector was producing two million starts a year. It went down to a trough of less than 500,000 new homes per year as recently as a year ago.
Over the projection horizon we see that coming back more rapidly than the actual measured GDP, so there will be some benefit. That will help with disparities.
On your particular question, though, related to government expenditures, I would note that the fiscal expansion in the early days of the recession made an important contribution to GDP and to the recovery. It accounted for up to a third of the growth that came out in 2009-10 on a fully measured basis, a multiplier basis.
The subsequent adjustment and move in the direction of fiscal balance obviously does create some measure of fiscal drag, but as a whole, the direct contribution of government, at least in the bank's projection, the actual government spending—and I refer you to page 27 in the English—in 2013-14 is about 0.3 percentage points of additional growth.
For reference—and I'll hand it back to you—on average historically that contribution would be something like 0.6, but that's the nature of the adjustment. So it's positive, but it's not as much as previously.