Finance committee  Normally in a dynamic labour market there is always a mismatch of skills. That's why the unemployment rate actually never goes down to zero, because there's always that kind of mismatch in the labour market. New people come in and new jobs are created, so part of that is normal.

Finance committee  There are a couple of issues here. The way the projection is done normally, because we always look at the potential output as a sort of driving force for the economy because everything, in our view, has to go back to that.... Part of that is the economy cannot really operate abov

Finance committee  Absolutely. If you look at the long term, based on our estimates, we have room of about 1.3% of GDP, about $25 billion, which the government can actually increase spending or reduce taxes without raising the level of debt-to-GDP ratio. The statement that we have in the report is

Finance committee  Yes we can.

Finance committee  That refers to a request we had after the 2012 budget to have access to all of the cuts as a result of the operating review. We wanted to assess the impact of the cuts on the service levels by program. We did not get that information at the time. If you remember, we even went to

Finance committee  Well, 0.5% would be about, I believe, $8 billion, $9 billion—

Finance committee  —I don't have all of the numbers in front of me, but....

Finance committee  That's our estimate, it's 46,000 by 2016.

Finance committee  In terms of the growth in program spending, I think it's a historical low. We have not seen this in the past.

Finance committee  Parliament cannot exceed the appropriation level that is approved by Parliament. Having some lapse is normal in the operation because managers have to ensure that they're not going to exceed that, so they are obviously very prudent in managing their finances. Normally what happen

Finance committee  To be able to conduct that study and to answer those questions, we needed detailed data. As I have already mentioned, it was not possible to do that study that would have allowed us to fully answer the questions you asked.

Finance committee  Again, sir, this is a matter of policy, which we do not comment on. I think one thing one needs to always be careful about is the time frame that they use for these kinds of studies. It is true that the median income in Canada has been increasing since the mid-1990s essentiall

Finance committee  To the level in the 1980s. I'm not saying they're catching up to anybody else. I'm saying there was a significant drop in the median income, and then we saw a gradual increase since the mid-1990s to the level where we are right now. It's true that recently there has been growth i

Finance committee  Compared to others, yes, but not compared to—

Finance committee  Based on that study, yes, it seems that we are above the Americans, but whether that's a good criterion or not, I don't know.