Thank you, Chair.
Chair, it's interesting to hear this discussion, talking about housing and then bouncing back and forth to the economy. It's good to remind ourselves every once in a while that the pandemic came on within a very short time. Decisions were being made. There was a sense of urgency. There were a lot of people who required food on their tables. A lot of people were out of work. There were barriers after barriers after barriers for families out there who needed staples. I think the government had a short time to react to this, and it reacted immensely and in the right direction. As we've seen with Bill C-2, we have now scaled back the investments and started to target where those priorities are now for government.
As a reminder, in the years leading up to the pandemic, Canadian inflation was relatively stable and close to its formal target of 2%. As suggested by Trevor Tombe, a professor at the department of economics at the University of Calgary:
The pandemic was not only a public-health crisis but also the...sharpest economic contraction in Canadian history. The pace of recovery since those dark early months, however, has been nothing short of remarkable.
I want to ask Mr. Perrault if he can elaborate a bit on what sort of impact minimal action would have had on the economy, including housing, if we hadn't made those investments.