Thank you again for the question, Mr. Chair.
I mean, there's no exact science. It is all a relative calibration. There was a whole lot of slack in the economy from the government's perspective as it was writing the budget, and we can see evidence of that even in the most recent labour market report, where you can still point to over one million Canadians who are unemployed or suffering from a severe reduction in hours. Likewise, business closures are hovering at anywhere between 3% and 5% of normal pre-pandemic baseline operations.
The justification is that there is still a lot of slack to absorb and, beyond that, there's some intent to make up for the potential scarring effects over the last year so that we don't get into a position where these businesses never reopen their doors and unemployed people never get attached and properly matched to a job that their skill sets are suited for.
In that context, the budget tries to make a strong case that part of the spending was securing the recovery and building our growth potential beyond the pandemic.