Finance committee  I think it's obviously in the self-interest of banks to scare people into saving more. Who benefits from that? Banks do. They want people to park large quantities of money with them at low interest so they can lend it out. I should make it clear that, when I say “too much money”, it's not as if these people are living in palaces or anything; the point is that people are dying with positive savings.

Finance committee  I'd like to thank the finance committee for inviting me to this hearing. Before I get started, just some background. From what I saw with the previous panellists and from this panel, I think what you're mostly going to get from them is micro-analysis of the individual proposals.

Finance committee  I'm almost tempted to hand this off to Craig. I'm happy to say—

Finance committee  Coming from Statistics Canada, I have very few reflexes about forecasting and policy-making. My general impression.... I produce a leading indicator that has declined 0.2% in the last month. Basically, it's all because of the commodity price component. If you exclude that, it's up 0.3%.

Finance committee  No. I saw a poll in the paper that the majority of Canadians think that the economy is declining and you sit there and go, people read too much into the stock market and the dollar. There are a lot of headlines surrounding this. It's a big price effect, it's a big story, but the idea that this is going to pull down our whole economy exaggerates the importance of this sector in our economy.

Finance committee  The government has 23%, for example.

Finance committee  Yes, I think I said that.

Finance committee  Let me just reiterate that, even with the increasing growth, partly in response to the decline in the development of resources, the idea is that we are more dependent than before on resources, especially in the oil sector. That is relatively small compared to the manufacturing and housing sectors, for example.

Finance committee  Yes. According to the Bank of Canada's best estimate, by the end of the year, the growth of the oil industry will be reduced by 0.3%, which would not have been the case if there was no decline in the sector.

Finance committee  I think I was basically just responding to this attitude that because of the dramatic growth of oil sands output in this industry generally over the last decade, that somehow we've become a petrostate. I'd very much agree. I remember back in the fall, Jack Mintz was asked if the Canadian dollar was a petrocurrency.

Finance committee  I would just throw it in that along with 1998 being instructive, 1986 was also instructive. In 1986 prices fell so rapidly they wanted to shut down the Hibernia project. The government had to bail out. That proved to be a very far-sighted decision. It just goes back to “don't panic”.

Finance committee  One of the problems in our society is the growth of pseudo-knowledge and sham data. I think that's what I called it.

Finance committee  And I'm pulling my words now compared to the op-ed. I would bring your attention to that op-ed.

Finance committee  I'll jump in on this one. I wrote what you could call a high-spirited op-ed in the Financial Post yesterday on the CIBC jobs report. First of all, part-time and self-employment peaked 20 years ago. It's been a declining share of employment over time. So the idea that jobs are shifting into this precarious labour force, no, it doesn't work.

Finance committee  I don't keep track of the House.