Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Madam, gentlemen, welcome to your House of Commons.
I am very pleased to address some questions to you, because I appreciate that everybody will recognize that we have some people here who rank very highly among civil servants, and especially the Minister of Finance. This is a huge issue for everybody. We're talking about billions of dollars. The last budget was $330 billion. We need strong people to address that, strong people to be sure that everything is going well, and we are very pleased to have those kinds of people in our civil service.
What you tabled a few minutes ago about the projections for this budget was very interesting, but I would like to go back to last October when the Department of Finance published a report on the reality of the situation of the public finances. In that report—and I have talked about it many times in the House of Commons, in interviews, and everywhere I go—there is key information, very important information, on page 14.
First of all, just to be sure we're talking about the same report, it's one that was tabled to the Minister of Finance on October 10. On page 14, this report expressed real concern—by our side and I hope by everybody in Canada—about the future of the administration of this country. If nothing changes, we will have zero deficit in 2055 and we'll have to address debt of $1.5 trillion in 2050.
Those figures, those numbers, came from a report made by the civil servants of the finance department, and we are very pleased to welcome you guys to our committee.
First of all, I would like to know why the Minister of Finance would publish that kind of report.