Finance committee  I gave the best advice I could to both finance ministers.

Finance committee  The advice of public servants to their ministers is covered by cabinet confidence. That's the way the system works, and I gave the best advice I could to those ministers.

Finance committee  Thank you very much. This is very important. This goes right to the heart of confidence in money as a store of value and a unit of account. I'm sure most are aware that we underinvested in banknotes in the previous decade, and, partly as a consequence of that, counterfeiting spiked up in Canada to unacceptably high levels.

Finance committee  I was a senior public servant, as you know, in the Department of Finance. Quite frankly, I was a senior public servant under the previous Liberal government and under the current Conservative government. I ran the last five budgets and all tax decisions that were put forth by both governments.

Finance committee  I'll refer to my previous answer, which is that I'm not going to go into the details of advice given to any minister of finance or any minister of the crown that I gave as a public servant. I will point out, though, as a macro fact, that over the course of the last year and a half, as I'm sure you're aware, the TSX, the largest market, is up substantially.

Finance committee  Thank you very much for the question. This point about transparency and openness and open communication is extremely important. Part of what I mentioned in my remarks was the importance of expectations in driving monetary policy. We had an earlier conversation about expectations grouping around 2%.

Finance committee  Thank you for those questions. First of all, the Bank of Canada's intervention policy continues to be an option in Canada. Although rarely used—I believe that is correct—it is nevertheless an option. We can intervene in cases of market failures or when the value of our currency could have a serious impact on our mid-term economic prospects.

Finance committee  That was the fourth question.

Finance committee  Thank you for those questions. This issue—the new facility, policy, or regulatory change—is something we are studying. In the context of looking at it, we will have to form a judgment about whether legislative change is required in order to enact it. Just for education—some of you may know this—the Bank of Canada has very broad powers under paragraph 18(g) of the Bank of Canada Act, but they're powers in the case of a serious financial disruption, and that has to be declared.

Finance committee  No. You're referring to a very technical point, general market disruption, which is a term of art of lawyers in liquidity agreements for these asset-backed CPs, and there's a very wide range of it. This has nothing to do with that. On your question about bailing out, I want to repeat what I said earlier.

Finance committee  First of all, I want to thank you for congratulating me on my French. It's probably too soon, and I apologize for that. I am going to continue to work hard. But let me get back to your question. When the income trust decision was made by the government, as you know, I was a senior official with the Department of Finance.

Finance committee  There are several reasons why the government made that decision, including tax leakages, questions related to productivity, and the principle of a neutral system of taxation in terms of its impact on different industry sectors, companies and regions. That is a general question which I can comment on as the next Governor.

Finance committee  Yes, very briefly, what we have tried to do, what Governor Dodge has tried to do, and what the Government of Canada has tried to do is to help revitalize the IMF. There are two ways to do that. I reference surveillance. I won't bore you with the details of surveillance, but the core aspect is that the IMF, in surveying economies, should be much more frank and direct in terms of their assessment of those economies, the policies the countries are following and the impact of those policies on other economies.

Finance committee  Thank you for the question. I do want to leave this as one of the messages in my remarks, but these issues are very topical and very important, and I think they will extend well into the first year, certainly, and potentially beyond the work program of my tenure at the Bank of Canada.

Finance committee  I would like to repeat one important point. The recent volatility of the Canadian dollar cannot only be explained by the fundamentals. That is very clear, as I stated in my answer to Mr. McCallum. The best thing the Bank of Canada can do is manage the inflation rate and try to ensure that it is low, stable and predictable.