I appreciate that.
I want to return to the issue of business investment, which has been raised by a number of colleagues here. As you point out, businesses do have healthy balance sheets. I think it's fair to say that's in part due to corporate tax reduction policies.
From a number of presentations by you and others regarding the lack of business investment, it seems to me there are two reasons: one is uncertainty, and the other is the reason you outline on page 21 of your report. I'll come to that later.
With regard to uncertainty, you'll never find a period in human history when world affairs are completely certain. Also, a market economy is by its very nature dynamic and therefore uncertain. I have to say that personally, I'm not that sympathetic to the uncertainty argument. You can comment on that in your answer.
With respect to your response on page 21 with respect to reasons for not investing, you say that “most sectors expected to lead the recovery in non-energy exports currently have sufficient excess capacity to meet demand”, so therefore they don't actually need to spend to actually meet the current demand. You point out that we therefore need exports to increase. You obviously link that to the value of the Canadian dollar.
I want you to comment on that from a business investment point of view. Then I want to tie it into another issue, which is that some observers have said that the bank is moving to actually account for more factors in terms of what it's doing. Traditionally the role has been simply to target inflation. Many people have said that since you have become the governor, you've moved more into looking at things like the value of the Canadian dollar and exports, in terms of what the bank is doing, so you're actually expanding the bank's role beyond the strict monetary policy of inflation targeting.
I'm wondering if you can address the business investment point, and then the point about whether the bank's role is expanding and should expand to take into account trade, the Canadian dollar, and other such matters.