No problem.
On both the fiscal balance and the social balance question, I will preface my remarks by saying we should take no lessons from the United States, where they currently have a budget deficit in the order of 5% of GDP, with a debt-to-GDP ratio that is growing. On the social side we've certainly seen a flow of both refugees and high-skilled tech workers into Canada that Bloomberg has referred to as the “human stimulus” that has been greatly beneficial to not just our current economy, but its long-run prospects.
On the issue of balanced budgets, what's important to keep in mind is that the best measure of fiscal sustainability is the debt-to-GDP ratio, the total debt compared to the size of the economy. What happens when you have a small deficit of less than 1% of GDP, as we have right now, is that the economy is growing so much that even if the debt goes up by a tiny bit, the overall debt-to-GDP ratio is still shrinking. That's the circumstance we find ourselves in.
We have a deficit in the order of, as I said, less than 1% of GDP. It is certainly a policy choice that one could make to attempt to balance the budget in one or two years, but of course, with that choice come consequences. One can only do that by cutting back on spending initiatives or by increasing taxes. Those are the two choices in front of us.
When I see proposals to move us more quickly to a balanced budget situation, I'm always curious to hear the precise details of what spending measures will be eliminated. As you mentioned, there's the GIS initiative, there's the Canada child benefit and many other initiatives of this government that would easily be argued to have been beneficial not just to the economy, but also to the society.
I'd be curious to hear what people have in mind when they suggest that we should move quickly to a balanced budget, which of these initiatives they wish to cut.