Public Accounts committee  I would agree with that.

Public Accounts committee  In describing the statistic, we're looking at both the numerator and the denominator. This is net debt on a total government basis. This includes national accounts data across provinces and the federal government. It also includes the assets of the QPP and the CPP in order for it to be comparable on an international basis, because not every federal state is designed like Canada.

Public Accounts committee  It's the universal child care benefit.

Public Accounts committee  No.

Public Accounts committee  Just to put some meat on the bone, other transfers—I think this is your question—refers to the suite of grants and contributions delivered by departments. That's anything from aboriginal programming, other infrastructure programming, or labour market programming in an employment and social development context, which amount to—

Public Accounts committee  Right, so in the estimates, where you see grants and contribution elements, that would be those things.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you for the question. For the first part of the question, indeed, the Canadian economy has recovered all the jobs it lost, and more, during the recession. We're partners with the United States in trumpeting that dynamic. As for why the economic highlights don't provide more qualitative commentary on income, the quality of pay of jobs, and I think what you mean is income distribution across all the income quintiles within the Canadian population, and also job type, the reason is that we don't do that at the front end of the public accounts.

Public Accounts committee  I appreciate the question on the labour force participation rate. Again, we boast the highest participation rates in the G-7. We're above our U.S. counterparts in the long-term unemployment rate. We have less long-term unemployed. As the economic highlights suggest, we have the best job creation record since 2006.

Public Accounts committee  You might simply say that, yes. I mean, we obviously consult with private sector economists and the banks and the think tanks. We work very closely with the IMF and the OECD. The IMF has tabled their most recent World Economic Outlook. For seven of the last eight outlooks, they've revised down their global economic growth projections.

Public Accounts committee  A trade deficit is composed of a lot of things—trade in services, trade in goods. As you know, the dynamics across service and goods industries are so different in a pan-Canadian context. But yes, external demand is probably the greatest risk to the Canadian economy at the moment.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you for the questions. The first part is just the pure metrics of it. Business investment is part of the larger composition of the national accounts, and the national accounts are a metric that is used globally. This is an OECD and United Nations standard in terms of how we effectively quantify economic activity and specifically economic growth: the composition of the economy across the world.