Finance committee  Yes, of course, you're correct. That's the expense of the government and they have to manage that within the envelope they have in terms of revenues and the amount that they borrow.

Finance committee  In terms of the overall size of the economy and where we are going, no, it is not a big amount. The reason for that is twofold, actually. One is that interest rates are rising in our projection. That's obviously one impact on the public debt charges. The other one is that the gov

Finance committee  We did a study earlier this year in which we looked at Canadians' household debt and their debt service ratio and we showed that over the next five years the service ratio will increase. That is obviously a pressure on households in terms of their finances, because as the debt se

Finance committee  How much would they be able to absorb? That's hard to tell. Chris, do you have any views on this?

Finance committee  The government has to find the funds in the other areas of operating expenditures, but that's something we talked about, an issue we raised in our April report. Managing operating expenditures is therefore a challenge for the government since collective agreements show that the w

Finance committee  The trajectory for the fiscal deficit has changed. It's lower now than what the government was forecasting at the time and what we are forecasting right now. This translates into a lower debt-to-GDP ratio relative to what was predicted before.

Finance committee  The only thing that means is that mathematically, since the target was 31% and now they have 29%, they have reached it, so there is that gap. The gap between 29% and 31% is the extra room, in the sense that if they want to maintain that 31%, then they have this room. This is no

Finance committee  The biggest challenges...? That's a very good question.

Finance committee  Of course, yes, productivity gains. Productivity is always an issue for the Canadian economy. As you heard from the governor, recently we have seen an increase in productivity. Whether it is sustainable over time or not is the major question. Certainly it's not sustainable at t

Finance committee  As Chris mentioned earlier, we haven't taken into account explicitly in our projection the issue of trade and uncertainty with NAFTA and the negotiations with the United States, because it's very hard to know exactly what is going to happen and how the negotiations are going to e

Finance committee  Certainly. The stronger U.S. demand will certainly boost our exports. That's always the case. We are highly integrated with the U.S. economy, so any positive change in the U.S. will affect us positively.

Finance committee  The Canadian dollar has some impact, certainly, on our trade. Where it goes and how it evolves over time will have an impact. The Canadian dollar, however, always fluctuates. Our projection is a very conservative, prudent projection for the Canadian dollar. It underlies our proje

Finance committee  In general, I think linking productivity growth to immigration is a stretch because it depends on what immigrants will do. That requires investment and other factors that will boost productivity. Productivity is a complicated issue that is very hard to track and understand. If y

Finance committee  Whether we are going to pull as much investment as the Americans is very hard to say. That depends on many different factors.

Finance committee  We certainly, as Chris mentioned, have been pleasantly surprised by the rise in investment in Canada in the past few quarters. Hopefully that will continue, but again these kinds of things depend on many different factors. Global factors are most definitely one of them, but typic