Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm going to direct my initial questions to Mr. Cross.
It's a delight to see you in person. We have spoken a few times over the last few years over Zoom, so it's great to have you before the committee.
I want to give a bit of history. When I was first on the finance committee, very early on, we had the outgoing governor of the Bank of Canada, Mr. Poloz, at the committee. I asked him about his program of quantitative easing and whether historically that sort of thing had been inflationary. He insisted it wasn't and that we should be worried about deflation. Then we had the current bank governor, Mr. Macklem, who said in one of his press conferences about a year and a half ago that interest rates would remain low for a long time.
I find it interesting, with the greatest respect, that sometimes economists get to say all kinds of things and it's probably the only profession in which you can be so wrong and get to keep your job.
However, now we have a situation in which we have massive inflation and interest rates are high, so I'd like to get your confirmation on a number of issues. For example, would you agree that the quantitative easing combined with profligate government spending over the course of this government is a factor in inflation in Canada?