Finance committee  Again, sir, there was a big change made in December 2011, when the government changed the Canada health transfer. It was an important change, and it actually solved a lot of the federal government's fiscal problems. But it did transfer this problem effectively to the provincial a

Finance committee  Sir, I apologize for your frustration. When we released the report in January on the Canada health transfer, we effectively updated our analysis. I assume that all members of Parliament would like us to keep our analyses current. We released the report and we said effectively tha

Finance committee  I think a change in the appointment procedure would get the support of all of Parliament. To be dismissed by cause would be a big improvement to the legislation. Thank you.

Finance committee  Sir, I think what I'll do is start, and then I think Chris wants to jump in. I would start by saying, again, that our first sustainability report was in 2010. The second one was done in 2011. We've seen sustainability reports. We used methodologies we borrowed from other countri

Finance committee  Maybe, sir, I'll just start. It's true. You've seen graphics. There are similar types of graphics in budget 2012 on what will happen to the old age dependency ratio. We're all finance economists. We can calculate what that would mean to potential output and budgetary revenues. C

Finance committee  Well, we do talk about an economy, and we have projections based on increased productivity growth, sustained productivity. We're talking about productivity growth in Canada of about 1% for the labour productivity growth. So we build these into our projections overall, and yes, I

Finance committee  Yes, I think it was created as part of the Accountability Act. I was appointed in March 2008.

Finance committee  Well, I think when we were comparing apples to apples in terms of acquisition costs and sustainment costs, what we found through the Auditor General's report was that there were numbers that were being produced by Department of National Defence officials that were similar to numb

Finance committee  Well, I wish we could say that we actually could talk about real accuracy in the sense that we actually knew what the final prices would be and we could be looking backwards in time. But still at this point, when we're talking about F-35s, and when we're talking about the economy

Finance committee  That's correct. It's a Governor in Council appointment, but effectively appointed by the government. Actually, I did work for the Prime Minister. I did work for this government as a public servant in the Privy Council Office, and I'm proud to say that.

Finance committee  In my own experience, when I was being appointed in March 2008 and came to this very room in front of different committees, when committee members found out that I had worked for this Prime Minister—and these were different committees—they were concerned that I wouldn't be non-pa

Finance committee  As a percentage of the economy, I think the numbers are there in front of you.

Finance committee  I'm sorry, I'm just waiting.... There's a question?

Finance committee  There are different models to calculate a natural rate of unemployment. Most economists would probably say Canada should have something just under 6%.

Finance committee  I'm not sure I understand the concept, but I'm not—