Thank you very much.
Governor and Senior Deputy Governor, it's very nice to meet you both, and thank you for being here today.
I'm going to focus on one aspect of your analysis, and it has to do with determining whether or not the measures the government has introduced in the budget are going to add to growth in the country. In your report you indicate correctly that it's about $11 billion in infrastructure investments, and about $12 billion in households, and you think that the effects will be felt in 2016. That forms a basis for your analysis that in a sense it's going to help and overwhelm the negative factors we're seeing in the economy, but you also have two really important caveats in there, and one has to do with households and whether or not they're going to be spending.
You also point out in the very next section that household debt has gone up in this country because more mortgages are being taken on in Ontario and B.C. Of course we're seeing the negative effect on housing markets in the oil-producing provinces. With all of those taken into consideration I want you to expand a little on your comfort level saying that putting money into the hands of families in this country is necessarily going to be spent in the economy and moved along when we're looking at such high levels of debt. There's a propensity for people to save or pay down that debt because they are concerned about whether jobs are being created. I would overlay that with one anecdote. It's very difficult to see cousins and brothers and sisters and friends across the country losing their job and seeing a lot of discussion about the oil sector. You refer to it as a structured change in our economy. They're seeing that and they're very concerned about what that means to them.
So tell me a little about how the council ended up deciding that people will spend this money instead of saving it. I would say one last thing; the tax cut we have before us that the government has introduced amounts to 90ยข a day for an individual, and I fail to see how that's going to spur great economic growth that's going to counter what we're seeing in terms of the losses in our country.
With that I'll turn it over to you.