Finance committee  What is really important in terms of the fiscal situation is the long-term sustainability of the fiscal structure. The studies that we have done in providing a fiscal sustainability report—and the last one was issued in November—show that in fact with the government cuts, the c

Finance committee  Yes, based on a sustainability analysis. Yes.

Finance committee  In order to do the study that you requested and also a study that a senator requested us to do on the tax gap, we requested information on the microdata from CRA. Essentially, we wanted to look at the taxpayer data. CRA takes the view that it is not permitted to give us that inf

Finance committee  In our view, you are right, but we are taking a pragmatic approach, in the sense that we want to get the data one way or another to do the work for you and for Parliament. We have reached a point where we have essentially no choice but to agree to the conditions that they have pr

Finance committee  That's right.

Finance committee  We do not have an official legal opinion. We have done some legal analysis. Jean-Denis may want to comment.

Finance committee  I'm glad you asked for a clarification. I think what I said was not that the exports do not make any contribution to the Canadian economy, but that exports did not make any contribution to growth in GDP since 2000. That's a completely different issue.

Finance committee  Scott, do you want to talk about that?

Finance committee  I can get into trouble by answering that question, sir.

Finance committee  I don't think I can make any comment. Again, it's a policy sort of question that we normally do not make any comments on.

Finance committee  Certainly. The Canadian dollar has a very important role to play, given that it impacts both our exports and our imports because it determines the cost of imports. One way or another, there has to be a rate at which it optimizes the impact on the Canadian economy. Nobody really

Finance committee  You are absolutely right. At the moment, the main estimates are not very useful in examining the government's financial situation because of the different accounting systems. Two years ago, we advised the parliamentary committee to change the system in the main estimates and we

Finance committee  If I may, I will answer this in English. We have looked at the current rate, which is 1.88% and which the government has frozen for three years, but that creates a surplus in the account, which, based on the rules and the regulations that actually were introduced by the governm

Finance committee  In fact, on the issue that we have with that, if that rate could have been dropped much sooner without really creating any further deficit in the account—so a drop in the rate sooner—it would have actually provided that savings to Canadians without really creating any deficit in

Finance committee  Yes, we do that, in fact. What we do is we make sure that we follow the legislation so whatever premium rate we put in there would actually ensure that the account would be balanced over that seven-year period, which is in the legislation.