Both in the Department of Finance and at the Bank of Canada, we put a lot of time into debt management in doing an analysis of what we think is the right and optimal approach to debt management for the Government of Canada. The types of issues we debate and analyze are related to such things as whether in the current interest rate environment, where long-term rates are very low, we should actually structure the debt in such a way as to move more debt out to the longer end of the curve.
Considerations in those types of decisions involve things such as the natural trade-off between locking into long-term debt at a time when short-term interest rates are low. Probably more importantly, we know that there is what you could almost think of as a natural hedge between debt charges and revenues. That is to say, when revenues decline because the economy is weak, debt charges also tend to decline, so we balance those considerations in our analysis.
We've spent a lot of time internally at the bank, in the finance department, and with external consultants in developing models. We update those models every year, and in the budget we present a summary analysis of our conclusions.