Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Governor Dodge, I have a few questions that I wanted to get your opinion on. One of them has to do with this issue of whether or not, in our current circumstances, government fiscal policy and the bank's monetary policy are working together.
I want to bring you back to something you said in 2002 at the Donald Gow lecture. You talked about policy coordination and co-operation. You said that inflation targets are joint targets of the bank and of the government and that “when the government changes fiscal policy, it needs to think of how these changes will affect inflation and, consequently, interest rates.”
Those were your words back then.
We know recently that Mr. Manley talked about his quote, which became known in the media, about pressing the gas and the brake at the same time. I wonder if you think, under the present circumstances, that the federal government's fiscal policy is working at cross-purposes to the bank's attempts with regard to quantitative tightening—to try to get rid of some of the bonds that they had to acquire—and the increasing of interest rates?