Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Governor. I'd like to take you back to what you mentioned a couple of times—namely, the very unconventional time in which we found ourselves in 2020 and some of the tools we had never used before. We kind of brought them to bear on the market to make sure that interest rates...and that the market was continuing to function. That, of course, was the QE you've spoken about.
At some point, the QE became more of a regular policy tool that we used on an ongoing basis versus that really immediate short-term need we had when everything started. You also mentioned, when we last spoke, the Bank's making its policy choices based on some of the decisions made by the federal government's Department of Finance.
The question is this. We know that QE has helped keep interest rates low. The flip side is that had we not done it, had we not purchased government bonds, then interest rates would have gone up. I'm curious as to whether the Bank really had a choice whether it would do QE or not later in the pandemic, when it was presented with fiscal plans from the government that we knew would spend $100 billion, $200 billion, $350 billion.