In that scenario, we see physical distancing measures being gradually eased over the spring, and being lifted not before the end of the calendar year. Some measures would remain in place throughout the year—so provinces and the federal government would continue to have revenues—but the revenues would certainly not go back to the pre-pandemic level during the current fiscal year. We would probably have to wait past the end of the fiscal year for the government revenues to return to the same pre-pandemic level. It will be several months, if not a few years, until we see the same level of government revenues that we had in February, for example.
With respect to the confidence level that I have in the $252-billion deficit figure, I'd say that it depends on a number of things. It depends on physical distancing measures being lifted gradually throughout the remainder of 2020. It assumes that oil prices will remain low for the rest of the year. However, we also stopped taking into consideration measures as of April 24 because we had to go to print at some point.
In my view, the $252-billion figure is probably on the optimistic side. If I had to bet on that number, I'd say that it's more likely to be worse than that than it is to be better than that. I think that $252 billion is probably on the very optimistic side as things stand now, but as I said before, we could be pleasantly surprised. A genius could come up with a vaccine tomorrow, and we could go back to living a normal life by September, but that doesn't look likely for now. In all likelihood, the deficit will be higher than $252 billion.