Finance committee  Thank you.

Finance committee  We have done calculations from time to time. If you say the spread of WCS to WTI is $40, which would be a pretty big spread—it's a lot smaller than that now—you multiply that by the exports of oil, you can get a pretty big number, well into the billions. If the spread is narrower

Finance committee  I do feel the responsibility to add that what you saw in the United States is net worth changed quickly. The value of their houses fell, the stock market fell, all of a sudden their network fell, but their debt didn't go away and that created a problem. You're right, but it doe

Finance committee  As the governor says, this has been an ongoing puzzle. I would agree that successive governments have done many of the right things. I think one thing to keep in mind is that while productivity growth has disappointed, it was growing at least 1% over the last 20 years and of cour

Finance committee  I would add that from a Canadian perspective we have long had a leverage limit, a 20:1 asset-to-capital ratio. That is an important reason, among several others, that Canadian banks did better through the crisis. Because of this leverage cap, buying securitized subprime mortgages

Finance committee  There is a very generous and long phase-in period to bring in the new higher Basel capital standards out to 2019. OSFI decided, quite intelligently, to make Canadian banks meet those now, and all major Canadian banks do meet those higher standards today.

Finance committee  The only thing I would add is that when we set monetary policy, we take into account all the things that are affecting the Canadian economy. Obviously, fiscal policy is one of those things. We take the government's plans as given, as they are published in their budgets. That is f

Finance committee  Thank you.

Finance committee  I would like to add something to that. The debt strategy is established by the Department of Finance. As the governor mentioned, we are advisers. The other factor is that the situation changes. During the crisis, the government launched a big budget stimulus plan, which made th

Finance committee  There needs to be a balance. Pension fund managers or large insurance companies are very fond of long-term bonds because their liabilities are long-term. However, they represent only a segment of the market. For the government, the curve goes up on average. It costs the governme

Finance committee  What I would say now is, as I mentioned, that the government's requirements are changing, and in combination with new standards for banks, that is affecting the liquidity of global markets to some degree. It's going to be important in the debt strategy to make sure there is enoug

Finance committee  Well, the numbers of course always change. Right now since the last appearance, the Canadian dollar has weakened somewhat, so the contribution of the Canadian dollar part would be a little lower than it was last time. But it hasn't changed that much so it wouldn't be that far off

Finance committee  Mr. Chair, there's a graph in the monetary policy report that shows that exact calculation and you can see it coming down a bit.

Finance committee  I'll add one thing. Right now we think there is some unused capacity, some slack, in the labour market. There are certainly opportunities for further employment to take up that slack, and for the unemployment rate to come down. Then, in our own report, we expect it's going to tak

Finance committee  There is some anecdotal evidence on that, but we don't have systematic data on who owns properties. We haven't found it. We speak to builders. We get a sense from builders what's going on in the market, but we don't have systematic data.