Public Accounts committee  They usually come in the form of press conferences about health care, and they're not exactly overly positive.

Public Accounts committee  Why am I always the target?

Public Accounts committee  You're asking me a question that has several aspects, and it's not easy to answer in a reasonable way. I'd like to clarify something. At the end of my previous answer, I said that the government's view was that it wasn't necessarily a good owner for a project like Trans Mountain.

Public Accounts committee  But I would reiterate that it's not a Chinese-controlled investment bank—

Public Accounts committee  That's hard to do. Go ahead.

Public Accounts committee  I think I just answered that question by saying that we need to check. The rules vary across institutions. I would just need to check to make sure I gave you the absolutely correct answer to that question.

Public Accounts committee  The participation of the Government of Canada in the bank is always subject to the control of the Government of Canada.

Public Accounts committee  Nick, you can have it. I'm good with him [Inaudible—Editor].

Public Accounts committee  Throughout the pandemic, we did see both at the level of the Government of Canada and at the level of virtually all provinces some increase in the size of deficits. That being said, the largest increase by far was at the federal level, because, as I think you know, the federal government paid something in the order of 80% or 85% of the total cost of COVID, so the provinces were much less stressed financially.

Public Accounts committee  Yes, absolutely. Credit ratings are done on a government by government basis, a level of government basis. As you know, Canada is among one of 10 AAA-rated countries in the world. That rating is based on the strength of our debt-to-GDP and our deficit-to-GDP ratios, and our overall strength as well, because it's not just those numbers but rather the overall fiscal credibility of the Government of Canada that plays in a significant way into the AAA rating that the country has.

Public Accounts committee  As you rightly say, the paid-in capital there is only a relatively small fraction of the overall commitment. Sometimes the manner in which these multilateral development banks can call on additional capital that has been pledged varies across some of the banks. I would want to double-check on whether or not this one is purely callable at the direction of management or of the board of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank before I gave you an answer to that.

Public Accounts committee  We would not agree with that.

Public Accounts committee  I'll give you two numbers there. For 2021-22, it's 45% federal debt-to-GDP ratio. Then we project that figure over the period of the fiscal framework over the next five or six years. There are some variations in the economic statement that we published because, as you know, we publish both a base case and a downside case, and the debt-to-GDP percentage changes depending upon what case we're in.

Public Accounts committee  The federal government—

Public Accounts committee  No. That's a different set of calculations. The numbers that we publish are for the federal government and the federal government only, and then there's another set of calculations undertaken by international institutions such as the OECD or the IMF. They make a number of adjustments.