Thank you.
I just want to say thanks so much, Mr. Giroux, for being here today, for your hard work and for your extraordinary service to Canadians.
Hearing the conversation today, I was wondering what residents of my riding—Davenport is my riding, in downtown west Toronto—would think. If they were listening and they were hearing about the fact that our deficit might go past $252 billion and that our collective debt levels in Canada would go beyond $900 billion, there would be a lot of concern. I think, though, if the average Canadian thinks about what the cost of our doing nothing would be or of our being frozen with fear because of these debt levels, the costs to our economy and to our banks, in terms of bankruptcy, and to our health, as was mentioned in our discussion, would have been even worse than where we're at today.
I also would probably take some comfort knowing that Canada is doing relatively well in the G7. In comparison, we were doing well before this pandemic, and we continue to line up fairly well right now. Then I think I'd also take some comfort in what Governor Poloz mentioned the last time he was with us when, in response to a question on whether he thought Canada would be able to recoup or re-establish growth of the anticipated 4% to 6% GDP loss from this pandemic, he said that there was no reason to believe that we couldn't recover that growth or that we wouldn't actually be able to make positive structural changes.
Then last week, the Prime Minister, when asked by the media what he thought about moving forward in terms of the economy and how to support the Canadian economy, said that the Canadian government is very much focused on building back better. So that is where we're focused. I really take to heart your encouragement to our government to make sure that any type of economic recovery plan is actually put forward to Canadians as soon as possible.
My question to you, Mr. Giroux, is this. To build back better, we have a lot of opportunities. There's a generational opportunity to actually rebuild better both our economy and our society. I wonder if you might have any ideas or any contributions about how we “build back better”.