Thanks very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Minister, for being here. It's good to have you at our committee.
Minister, I want to take you back to something you said in October 2020 in a speech you were giving to the Toronto Global Forum. At that point, you stated that deflation and subpar growth would be a greater risk to Canadians than the threats of inflation and spiralling debt. That was well after COVID had begun. The markets were rebounding. The housing market was heating up. Our own finance critic, Mr. Poilievre, warned back in May and many more times that inflation was going to be the threat, and it truly is the threat that Canadians are facing right now. We just heard today that Canada’s food price guide said that, again, food prices will be going up.
You are asking us today to look at Bill C-2. You are asking us to approve more money that's going to be inserted into the economy. We're not sure where that's coming from—if you're going to be borrowing or if you're going to be cutting other programs—but we do know that Canadians are dealing with an inflation crisis, one that up until even about a week and a half ago you were not admitting was even happening.
My question is with regard to your comments back in October of 2020. Were you ill-informed? Did you believe that deflation was going to be the problem? Were you trying to manipulate—maybe not viciously, but were you trying to manipulate? I'm trying to get to the bottom of what you were thinking when you said deflation was going to be a problem in October 2020, when we saw, between March 2020 and October 2020, the signals in the economy that things were already roaring and heating up. What were you thinking? Were you ill-informed? Why would you say that?