Public Accounts committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. You're absolutely right that the government has a debt management strategy. It is published as an annex to the budget every year and presented before Parliament. The objective of the debt management strategy is to raise stable, low-cost funding wh

Public Accounts committee  It is determined internally. It's also determined in consultation with the Bank of Canada, which is the fiscal agent. It is based on consultation with market participants, investors. There's a significant investor relations program to make sure that we are tapping investor demand

Public Accounts committee  As I mentioned, I think the general feeling is that the action plan was successful. There were a number of reasons for that. I mentioned the size of it. That was one of them. Timeliness was another. It was rolled out very efficiently and quickly over a two-year period when it was

Public Accounts committee  I think you described some of them. Obviously, with revenue growing faster than expenses, that's going to contribute to a decline in the budgetary balance. Revenue coming in, as you mentioned, around 3.5%, slightly below nominal GDP growth, is not stellar revenue growth, but it's

Public Accounts committee  Is that in terms of the EI account?

Public Accounts committee  The EI account is currently in a deficit position.

Public Accounts committee  It's consolidated on our books, yes.

Public Accounts committee  In each budget and update, we actually have a series of shocks presented. I believe the budgetary balance would deteriorate by in the order of $600 million in the first year, building toward about $200 million by the end.

Public Accounts committee  Just a second; I can get you the actual figures so that I'm not just.... It's always in the update and budget. There's always a sensitivity table. For example, as you said, on a 1% increase in interest rates, you would see in the first year a deterioration in the budgetary bala

Public Accounts committee  Firms will make individual decisions based on a number of factors, of which I believe taxes would be one. In answer to the previous question, I was talking in generalities, as I mentioned, as OECD studies have shown. I wasn't dealing with a specific case.

Public Accounts committee  As I mentioned, business investment has bounced back quite strongly in the last little while.

Public Accounts committee  The manufacturing sector, as you know, has been on a secular decline for a while, and it's not unique to Canada. A number of industrialized countries have seen their share of output and employment in the manufacturing sector decline quite significantly over the last decade or so,

Public Accounts committee  A low debt ratio, as I mentioned, was one of the reasons Canada was able to respond as it did, again at the provincial level and the federal level, to the global recession. It gave the flexibility to provide a stimulus program without sacrificing or jeopardizing fiscal sustainabi

Public Accounts committee  Sorry, I misunderstood the question. Was the question about the difference between the increase you saw in the accumulated deficit versus the budgetary balance? Why it was larger than—

Public Accounts committee  When it comes to, obviously, the financing requirements of the government, there are also non-budgetary transactions that are involved. In that case, most of the financing, the increase in the deficit, was due to the $26 billion deficit that you mentioned, but there were also non