Thank you very much.
Inflation has come up a few times in this meeting. I believe you know of the work of the Harvard economist Alberto Cavallo, who specializes in inflation and has taken a very nuanced approach to the study of inflation as it relates to COVID-19.
In a recent paper, he wrote the following, and I'd love your thoughts. Of course, he's writing in an American context, but like every other country in the world, Canada is also dealing with the economic impact of COVID-19, so I think his findings are applicable to our situation.
In any case, what he says is that “social-distancing rules and behaviours are making consumers spend relatively more on food and other categories with rising inflation” in these areas—and he points to meat prices in particular as really escalating dramatically in the United States—“and relatively less on transportation and other categories experiencing significant deflation” in these areas. Is this something that can apply to the Canadian context? If it does, to what extent does that worry you?