You indicated, before, that you'll be keeping an eye on government spending and assessing how various kinds of spending contribute to aggregate demand.
There are a number of examples I might mention. I'll start with two.
One that might count as an expenditure is the government implementing a low-income CERB repayment amnesty, so that folks under the poverty line don't have to pay back CERB debt they owe. There are a lot of folks asking for this. It's reasonable for government to expect that people below the poverty line don't have the money to pay back that debt, anyway. There's a significant investment of resources, at the moment, in chasing that debt. Writing it off would count as an expenditure. I'm curious to know whether that is an expenditure you would see as one that contributes to aggregate demand. I think there are some very good reasons not to see that kind of expenditure in that light.
A second example I'd like to hear your thoughts on is investment in affordable housing. Obviously, that creates some demand in the construction market. There are finite resources there, although there are a lot of people in the trades who are currently unemployed, as well—supply and demand are not always a match there, even in the present moment. While construction resources contribute to demand in the short term, in the medium term and in the long term, they help augment supply to meet demand in housing. Housing people takes them out of market competition for rental apartments or...prospective home buyers who land in one of those suites.
How would the Bank of Canada interpret a large investment, for instance, in creating more affordable housing units or writing off pandemic debt?