Finance committee  We will certainly track those developments closely, because we're intensely interested in how the housing sector is evolving and, in particular, in those markets where these things are happening. By the way, it's something like 40% of our housing market in Canada when you just ta

Finance committee  We analyze that on a regular basis in our FSR, which will be coming out in June, so there will be supporting analysis there.

Finance committee  What we do is we track to see what its implications are. This is what we did when it first happened in Vancouver, and we did it in our last FSR right after the changes in Toronto, and the same thing with B-20, the other thing we talked about today. These are, to the very best to

Finance committee  Of course, I've thought of that. I think that one of the premises that lies behind that analysis is that the economy is operating at its capacity already. The difficulty that we've had for some ten years now is that the economy has been falling well short of its capacity. Therefo

Finance committee  I won't pass a judgment on that. One thing that we have talked about, and I've talked about myself, is the question of what different mixes of fiscal and monetary policy do. If the economy is facing shocks—which we have, of course, and not just shocks, but the legacy of those sh

Finance committee  Well, they are the same people, but there's a difference between them. I'm just saying that you would have debt one way or the other. I'm not saying what the optimal distribution is. I'm just saying that the choices between those two policies do give this outcome, and it's someth

Finance committee  Right, but to go back to your original question, when the economy is in a place where there's a lot of savings but not enough spending or investment, the stabilization of the economy usually demands some form of stimulus. Low interest rates can only do so much of the work, and we

Finance committee  How much has...?

Finance committee  Decreased?

Finance committee  Investment in Canada? It did not decrease in the fourth quarter. We think it was soft in the first quarter.

Finance committee  Our objective is to get inflation on our target of two per cent. The only time it will sustainably be at two per cent is when the economy is also operating at capacity. If the economy were operating below capacity, there would be downward pressure on inflation, and if it were ope

Finance committee  Yes, it's definitely there, very carefully. Do you have anything to add?

Finance committee  Yes, we do. We have a good touch on where our major debt holders are throughout the world. That's quite well known.

Finance committee  I'm afraid I don't know the answer to that. We enjoy a very strong demand for our product abroad. It's seen as a very high-quality product. No doubt it fluctuates. I know we can certainly get you data on that and pass it back.

Finance committee  Well, it would be saved in some other form. It would be perhaps saved in the stock market. More likely, a typical investor would have made a decision about fixed income versus non-fixed income, so the government debt would be competing in the fixed income space, rather than again