Finance committee  Yes, I have quite a lot of confidence in that. First, when this began, we realized that some of the most vulnerable folks out there would be those working in the rapidly expanding gig economy, all part-time work and that sort of thing. I actually didn't know how big it had becom

Finance committee  Carolyn, would you like to take that question?

Finance committee  I used the expression because the evidence we had, which is anecdotal obviously, was that companies were drawing their lines to their maximum even though they didn't need to for their cash needs at the time. This was probably just because they remembered that back in 2008, when w

Finance committee  I know that the programs we described can sound exotic and arcane, and so on. It's easier to think of it more like plumbing. When it's working fine, it doesn't really attract your attention, but when it doesn't, we have the problems. We're really playing a complementary role. Th

Finance committee  I see it as very important. As I said in my introductory remarks, whenever there is a global shock such as this, we of course feel the shock just like everybody else does. However, since we're a major commodity exporter, we feel a second shock because the prices go down too, and

Finance committee  I'm sorry, Chair, perhaps I could just finish that sentence. Frankly, it will depend on conditions. This is a temporary disturbance, so later this year some of that unwinding will already be happening. Some of it may be longer term, but for the most part it's going to be that whe

Finance committee  We've had a persistent narrative around the global financial system and the Canadian financial system that has mostly focused on our FSR, which, as you know, is once a year. Coming up in about four weeks from now, we'll be before the public with our updates on that. In a broad s

Finance committee  I'm going to turn to Ms. Wilkins, who I think has brought those numbers with her. We committed to $5 billion per week. It's only been three weeks, I think.

Finance committee  It's $15 billion, I guess.

Finance committee  Yes, $2.3 billion.

Finance committee  Yes, you frame the question in such a way.... The demand for currency or banknotes has not really changed significantly, and so we haven't created anything more than we normally do, but what has happened is we have created what we call “settlement balances”, which is what we call

Finance committee  The best way to think of this as a complete scenario is to think about what would happen if we didn't do it. If we didn't do it, the system would be starved for liquidity and credit lines would be cut so those companies wouldn't have been able to draw on them. We could have seen

Finance committee  As Ms. Wilkins said, the vast majority of the operations we have done so far are short-term operations and so they would just roll off the book as they matured. Whoever was borrowing then would borrow in the market because the market would be back to a normal rhythm with less ten

Finance committee  I guess I should begin by reminding you that regulating the banks is a job for OSFI, and that's not me passing the buck at all. As for what OSFI has said to the banks and publicly, it has not told them they can't pay dividends, but it has asked them not to increase their dividend

Finance committee  We have very little by way of data on how economies are faring yet, but they all seem to be faring similarly in terms of how much of a shutdown is happening and what it does to the economy. However, not every government has the same amount of firepower available, I would say, so