Finance committee  It has been slow compared to historical growth rates, even relative to estimates of a potential growth rate. That's partly why we have.... You'll recall the Governor of the Bank of Canada saying that the Canadian economy is operating well below it's sustainable capacity. You get

Finance committee  Sure. I think the biggest difference is in 2017. As you noted there's the 2.3% versus 2% from the bank. Looking at least at the composition of growth, it appears that the bank would have a weaker contribution of growth from the housing market. This may reflect some of the timing

Finance committee  I'll quickly add that, while the Canadian dollar has depreciated, the exchange rates of a lot of countries that Canada competes with in the U.S. market have also fallen and, in some cases, more. Therefore, that competitive edge that you would think Canada's lower dollar would be

Finance committee  Exactly.

Finance committee  In our earlier report, we looked at the debt servicing ratio that households are paying off, in servicing their debt both by making interest payments and by paying back mortgages—repayments. We've noticed that this ratio has been elevated and relatively stable over the last few y

Finance committee  Through demand....

Finance committee  This divergence in our 2015 report was driven by the settings of current policy both at the federal and subnational levels. Much of the pressure from population aging is limited at the federal level to its elderly benefits, whereas at the provincial level there's a broader impact

Finance committee  Actually, the demographics are somewhat easier, because Statistics Canada does produce long-term demographic projections by province and territory. It is clear from those that the demographic transition of population aging varies quite a lot across Canada, across the provinces. T

Finance committee  My recollection is that property taxes aren't included.

Finance committee  Other...government transfers are. Old age security payments or EI benefit payments, let's say, would be part of that income, and then the taxes that come out of it, but not property taxes.

Finance committee  That was really due to the data constraints. The statistical framework we're working in was developed at the IMF. It's called the government finance statistics framework. Currently, Statistics Canada doesn't provide the disaggregated or the provincial estimates for those debt sto

Finance committee  We are in discussion with Statistics Canada regarding some of the recent changes to the subnational government debt. Unfortunately, this is just at the aggregate level. I think the point you raised about looking at the province-by-province angle is critical. I think it is neces

Finance committee  Yes. Are you referring to our early April report?

Finance committee  Thanks for your question. In our report we noted that there was a deviation from past practices in presenting the contingency reserve, or the “set-aside”, as it was referred to previously. We think in terms of fiscal transparency that it's important to clearly identify the adjus

Finance committee  Sure. The way I think about it is that it's an adjustment that's made to revenues that is supposed to take into account the downside risk that the government sees in the private sector economic outlook. That's a very literal interpretation. It's not really a fund that's been set