Thank you, Mr. Chair. This is Bob Dugan at CMHC.
I'll start, and then I'll turn it over to my colleague Aled, who is the author of that report.
With regard to our approach to estimating the supply gaps, you raise an important point about population growth, which is a key assumption. Also, a key to our approach is to include economic variables as well, because traditionally, when you just use demographics to project the needs for housing, those approaches always tend to undershoot. We try to augment that approach by using economic factors such as income growth, interest rates and those kinds of things to come up with a better estimate of supply gaps.
When you look ahead.... When we looked at our population projections, we used information that we had available on the immigration targets that existed. Beyond that, we went to Statistics Canada's population projection, but we did try to look at alternative scenarios, One was with higher population growth, in order to assess what some of the upside risks could be in terms of how large that supply gap could become if population growth was stronger. We also had a lower-growth scenario to give an estimate of what it might be if we had slower economic growth in the years ahead, and that's important.
We include those economic projections, and that might add a little bit of volatility to our estimates. Having a range is useful. I still think it gives you a better estimate than ignoring the economic factors.
Aled, I'll pass it over to you, if there's more you'd like to add on our assumptions.