Thank you, Chair, and I want to thank the panellists as well.
My questions really are directed to my colleague Ms. Raitt regarding trying to get an understanding of the combined debt levels of provinces and the national level—there's only one taxpayer in the country. I recently read that RBC said that the provinces in this next year will run nearly $20 billion in deficits.
If the federal government decides, whatever the number is, there's a lot of speculation out there.... The National Bank last week said $90 billion over four years. Maybe that's a number that you could hang your hat on, but let me try to understand what you're saying.
Is there not a tipping point? I understand that growth creates value and equity in, let's say, the house of government or the house of the country, because I often think in my mind in very simplistic terms that the debt we have is the country's mortgage. As long as the house is valued more, I guess you could always go into debt against what the house is worth. But are you saying that can go on indefinitely and there's never a tipping point?