Look, the biggest risk is clearly the evolution of the pandemic itself. This third wave is straining our health care systems. It is requiring new public health measures and new containment measures. Unfortunately, that's putting some of the same people who have been hardest hit by this pandemic out of work again or delaying their return to work.
The good news is that vaccines are rolling out. I got my vaccination a couple of weeks ago. Roughly about 30% of Canadians now have a first shot, but we've seen that this virus is very unpredictable. There are new variants out there. That is certainly the biggest risk to the projection.
When you look at our projection, there are some upside risks as well as some downside risks. Canadians have accumulated a substantial amount of excess savings through this pandemic, which I can go into detail on. We're assuming, based on what Canadians have told us, by and large, that.... We expect Canadians to reduce their savings rate to where it was pre-pandemic, again, in consumption, in consuming again at the same sort of rate that they did before, but we are assuming that the extra accumulated savings that they've built up will be used to pay down debt, invest or buy houses.
They could end up dipping into more of those savings, and consumption could be even stronger than our forecast, so there are upside risks and there are downside risks.