I think it's clear that there is this policy tool kit in terms of the monetary and policy responses to weakness in the economy.
The Bank of Canada has responded, to quote them, with what they would characterize as considerable stimulus with respect to their policy rate and how that flows through to ultimate residential and commercial lending rates.
Likewise, from a fiscal policy perspective, if we rewind the clock, in early 2016 we were facing what seemed like pretty extreme economic weakness both domestically—growth was lagging—and internationally. We saw some signs, whether it be south of the border in the United States—where people were speculating about the United States teetering into recession—and beyond the borders of the United States, such as in China where they were going through this extreme financial market volatility. So fiscal measures in that context were helpful.
You talked about the fiscal policy tool kit. There was the Canada child benefit, which effectively contributed about $4 million or $5 million into the Canadian economy, so more of a kind of raw injection, like a raw income support. There was also a suite of infrastructure measures, some shovel-ready infrastructure measures, where there were some plans in hiring that were able to be deployed fairly quickly. Getting to the core of your question, there were some longer-term infrastructure measures that were designed to enhance the longer-term productive capacity of the Canadian economy.
However, infrastructure isn't going to do all the heavy lifting here. We're still facing these demographic challenges. We're facing these productivity challenges. There are a lot of indications that tell us we're already.... In comparative terms, our capital-labour ratio, like our capital stock, is pretty good. Maybe we're over-invested in kind of engineering structures in the energy sector, and less invested in Canada's productivity enhancing machinery and equipment, but yes, it's not just infrastructure. It's going to be a combo platter of a lot of other things—including skills development, which I think we'll hear about from ESDC in the later half of the testimony—doubling down on some of our sector strategies and innovation strategies, to really boost the long-term growth potential of the Canadian economy.