Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for your presentations. They've been very interesting.
Mr. Asselin, I want to start with you. I found your opening statement very insightful.
For the last couple of years, my colleagues and I have been arguing that the central bank's program of money printing—essentially, what they call “quantitative easing”—and the expansion in government spending is inflationary in nature. We made that argument in this committee several times. There's been very little buy-in, although Tiff Macklem did confirm, when I was questioning him about a year ago, that he thought that if government spending had been less, inflation would have been less.
We've never had Governor Macklem come out and say how inflationary the fiscal policy of the government could be until yesterday. During the monetary policy report press conference, he said that we “expect government spending to grow at two and a half percent. So, what that means is if all those spending plans are realized, government spending will be adding to demand more than [to supply]. And in an environment where we are trying to moderate spending and get inflation down, that's not helpful.”
Those are very strong words from a bank governor. Basically, he's saying that this spending is causing inflation and making his job harder.
Will you agree with that sentiment?