Thanks very much, Chair.
Thanks to all the witnesses for being here today. What a wonderful panel, and I wish I had at least five minutes with each of you, but I don't. I apologize to those who I won't have a chance to ask questions of, but know that we value your presentations and that we're listening to your responses to the questions of others as well.
Before I begin with the person I want to ask questions of, I will say that it's great to be here with a few folks who I know well, George Smitherman in particular. He's former deputy premier of Ontario and, as I recall, someone who grew up in my riding of Etobicoke Centre. He now lives in Etobicoke North, which I try not to hold against him. It's still a sore spot for me, but it's good to see you here, George.
Chief Bernard, it's wonderful to see you here and all the others as well. Thank you.
I going to start with Mr. Asselin.
Sometimes what happens when the Governor of the Bank of Canada or anyone else speaks, there are certain MPs who have selective hearing. They hear the things that they want to hear and maybe don't hear the things they don't want to hear.
We've had the Bank of Canada governor come to this committee multiple times, and he's spoken here and publicly about what's caused inflation. What's he's talked about is the war in Ukraine and the impact that's had on food and energy prices around the world. He's talked about supply chain bottlenecks post-COVID. He's talked about extreme weather events that have caused droughts and floods that impacted our agriculture sector around the world. He and many others have come to this committee, and they are objective, non-partisan experts on the economy saying that these are the major causes of inflation.
Would you agree with that?