Public Accounts committee  About 60%.

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, we basically noted the situation. As a matter of fact, we did identify that some years ago when we did a study on long-term demographics. We did encourage the government to provide information in a public forum. We saw that the government made a commitment in 2007 to p

Public Accounts committee  We certainly see the value of providing this information to Parliament and the public. In the report we actually identify a number of benefits. These are our thoughts, but also they are identified by various best practices that we saw, including recommendations from the OECD, and

Public Accounts committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think I've indicated what our recommendations are composed of, and I don't have comments to add.

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, certainly these are projections and not predictions, so they don't come with any precision with respect to what the point estimates might be. Even with our estimation, if you look at the graph on page 21, exhibit 7.5, you'll see we've included grey zones. That's why th

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, in the recommendation, we asked for a complete picture for Canada as a whole. This is particularly relevant when you are dealing with big changes that affect federal-provincial transfers. On the one hand, while you have a picture whereby the federal finances have chang

Public Accounts committee  Our recommendation is to have such information published in the public domain. We suggested that it would be from time to time, so we're certainly not trying to put excessive onus on the government and the Department of Finance to try to produce this type of information on an an

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, certainly, I'm not aware of any particular prohibition. It depends on the sensitivity and the confidentiality of the information that the provinces choose to share with their federal counterpart. If there is indeed confidential information, then obviously that should n

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, not on this particular tax measure.

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, I thank the member for that clarification. Essentially, for this particular measure, the Department of Finance did not do an analysis, because of the reasoning that there are the two-income families. It really is the sentence above that talks about the reduction of th

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, I'll attempt to answer the question once again. The $925 million is an estimate into the long term, so it wasn't something that we would be auditing. It was an estimate only to that level of precision, and that's why we didn't try to audit that particular number. So th

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, I just want to make sure that I got the question properly. The member is referring to paragraph 7.24, the $925 million. He quoted a number of $900 million. What rings a bell right away is the paragraph referring to income splitting for pensions.

Public Accounts committee  This is an estimate prepared by the Department of Finance, and the department would be in a better position to answer this. It is not so much about the amount of savings that one can afford or not, but rather to make a comparison between the growth of the economy and productivity

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, we did our own projection. Our projection results are quite similar to those of the Department of Finance. You can see that in exhibit 7.5 on page 21. The chart is not a prediction in the sense that it carries preciseness, but it's the trend line that counts. Accordi

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, thank you for the opportunity to meet with your committee today to discuss chapter 7 of our fall 2012 report, on long-term fiscal sustainability. Joining me at the table is Richard Domingue, the principal responsible for this audit. Long-term fiscal sustainability ref