Finance committee  Mr. Chair, I am concerned about what's going on in the United States. This is very uncharted territory, and I'm concerned about inflation in the medium term. In Canada, less so, because we have inflation and targeting, and we didn't get into quantitative easing. I say less so, bu

Finance committee  Our view on structural growth, sort of five to ten years out, is something around 2%, and consumer spending would be about 2%.

Finance committee  I've always thought more information--

Finance committee  Certainly, we're supportive of creating a tax advantage in this country, I think. One of the challenges Canada has is it's a smaller market than the United States and a lot of other big countries around the world. To the extent that we can create an improved environment, it's cer

Finance committee  Yes, we're taking into account both structural and cyclical components. The cycle--

Finance committee  No, we haven't broken it down in this analysis. In the near term the cycle dominates, but stretching out, say, beyond 2013-14, the structural influences are more important.

Finance committee  Yes, in our view, the household debt is consistent with only very modest consumer spending growth, and we have that factored into our more--

Finance committee  Well, I had to provide a bit of context there.

Finance committee  Okay. Anyway I was just getting to the punch line. Right now, I think we have to be a bit careful implementing anything federally, partly because the housing market is slowing. If things do pick up, then things should be looked at. Obviously, looking at the mortgage rules is on

Finance committee  Yes, maybe I'll start. We put out a report on household indebtedness a couple of weeks ago, and it was a fairly in-depth study. I've been shocked at the dearth of research in the area, so we undertook the study, and I think it's quite good, but perhaps I'm a bit biased. There

Finance committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It's a pleasure to be here. We heard from the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer today, who gave us their take on the fiscal outlook for the next five years. We did send around—and hopefully you did get a copy—our fiscal table, our view