Thanks for having me. It's very much appreciated.
The Canadian Automobile Association is a representative organization of 6.1 million Canadians. We're very active in the consumer space. We're keen to stay apprised of key issues affecting Canadian consumers that cover the waterfront of the areas we're in, specifically around vehicles and things like gas prices. We've been commissioning consumer research on the changes in gas prices over the last few months. Our most recent research came out in January, and it's quite fascinating what we're observing.
The first thing to say is people are paying attention. People are paying attention both to the drop in gas prices and to the larger changes that are happening in terms of oil prices overall. The world they see is that they have cheaper gas. The world they're thinking about is not so much about oil prices. From a consumer point of view, for the most part, Canadians are seeing it through that lens at least today. They're watching it and they're doing some things that are counterintuitive economically. What we found is people are paying more attention. They're driving further to get cheap gas, as gas is cheaper than it was before. Some of the stuff that's going on doesn't always make economic sense behaviourally, but people are happy at that level. That's what we've observed.
In terms of how people see the larger impact, what we observe is that there's Alberta and there's everybody else. Albertans in the data say they're worried about the macro-economic part of this equation and the numbers. Is this going to have a significant long-term economic impact? Two-thirds of Albertans say it will have a significant effect. Everybody else, the minority in the one-third to 40%, say it will have a significant negative macro-economic effect over the longer term.
The reason, from what we see in the data, is that most Canadians still believe this is a short-term thing. They don't think that this is going to go on for a long time. We asked them how long it would be until gas prices go forward. Will they go up again over time, or will they stay down? People are still saying that this is a three- to six-month thing. They're expecting it to turn around, maybe not quite go where they were before, but not to stay down in the ballpark where it has been. Since they don't see it as a long-term thing—and I think people on this panel would say it could be—there's a gap in terms of their perception of where it's going to be macro-economically over time. We would perceive that as this goes on, there will be more Canadians who will be thinking more like Albertans already are thinking about where this is.
Let me make a couple of final points about this. What we observe now is that they are feeling pretty good economically overall, as Jason alluded to. They're not seeing, other than Alberta, prices changing in housing or job losses. Reference was made to job intentions in Ontario and other manufacturing parts of the country. People aren't seeing that. When they're not seeing that, they're not going to start saying that they're concerned. What we see is that it's a micro-economic problem today for everybody outside of Alberta. In Alberta it's a macro-economic problem. We'll see where that goes over time as people understand and recognize this could be a longer-term versus a shorter-term problem.