Thank you.
Mr. Giroux, thank you for being here. I would love to see you come back for an extended period.
I want to spend a couple of minutes talking about fiscal responsibility and perhaps the benchmarks we look at. In 2015 we were told by the government that the budget would be balanced in four years. Then we were told that we should be looking at a declining debt-to-GDP ratio. Then it was suggested by the government that we should really be concerned about debt service costs. Now it's unclear, I think, to the market what measures this government is using to determine when it would remove its foot from the gas pedal or from increasing stimulus spending.
With the labour market where it is currently, this government claims that we've recovered most of the jobs from the pandemic. The government also likes to point to strong growth in the last half of this year and a strong growth outlook for next year. We heard testimony from other economists at this committee just last week warning against increasing stimulus spending from here forward. Would you agree that there are risks of continuing to spend?