Thank you, Chair.
Thank you to the Parliamentary Budget Officer for being with us today.
I want to pick up from where my colleague Ms. Dzerowicz left off with the recent reports of certain credit rating agencies.
We've seen S and P reaffirm the AAA rating roughly about a month ago. DBRS Morningstar made the same decision. You've seen commentary from some of the credit rating agencies about the fundamental underpinnings of the economy being strong, in part due to the substantial and timely release of economic supports for households and businesses at the outset of the pandemic.
If you can follow the bouncing ball with me, the IMF tabled a report—I hope you can stay with these various reports—also a little more than a month ago, indicating that, had those same measures the credit rating agencies spoke of not been advanced, the deficit would have been roughly the same as it is today, as a result of lost economic activity. With businesses shutting down and people not working, it makes sense to me.
I'm curious to know if you would agree with the IMF's conclusion, not only in that the scale of the deficit would have been the same without those measures in place, but also with their supplementary conclusion that the economic scarring that would have fallen upon the Canadian economy would have left us far worse off in terms of our ability to rebound from this pandemic once the economic recession comes to an end.