Thank you, Professor Sweetman.
You mentioned the 1990s and deficits. It was a Conservative government responsible for those deficits, but I do not want to dwell on that.
I do want to ask you about Conservative policy now. You will be familiar, because you study these sorts of issues, with pay-as-you-go legislation, which was first popularized in the United States.
Mr. Poilievre has proposed doing the same thing with respect to federal spending—as a control for federal spending.
This implies a lot, to say the least, for seniors in this country. I think of it in these terms: Since CPP, the GIS and OAS are, of course, indexed to inflation, from that comes a view that the increases that result from that indexing to inflation could count as new spending, necessitating cuts in other areas, according to the pay-as-you-go formula.
From that, one could say that we could see cuts in other areas, like the New Horizons for Seniors program, which we know has proved tremendously important in helping seniors in a variety of ways.
Do you have concerns about Mr. Poilievre's pay-as-you-go framework for federal spending in the future, should he be elected as prime minister?