Finance committee  We would not comment on whether a plan from the government or any other party works or not. We can provide an assessment of what the results are from those measures. Certainly some of the things you just mentioned are facts. Obviously the measures that have been taken by the gov

Finance committee  I think we have seen one example of that in terms of one major company moving their headquarters here and that definitely has some positive impact on the job market. But whether or not the tax is the only reason they have done that I can't really say as I don't really know what e

Finance committee  Certainly. It all depends on what your perspective and fiscal anchor is. If the fiscal anchor is over the medium term and the objective is not to have deficits over the medium term then the room is very limited. As we showed, after the measures introduced last week actually the

Finance committee  In principle, freer trade definitely would benefit the economy. That's without question. We haven't done any studies on CETA, the new agreement with the European Union. We have a study on that in our work plan, but it would take a while to finish it. It's a complex project. Hope

Finance committee  That was not a direct policy recommendation in our report. It was just an illustration of how capital investment would affect the budget and debt in Canada. We showed the impact on the budget is very small, and it may have potential benefits.

Finance committee  In general since we are a net oil exporter, in the short run there will definitely be a negative impact on revenue through lower corporate taxes. The complexity of that issue is lower oil prices will benefit other sectors of the economy and also consumers because consumers will

Finance committee  Not the most recent decline in oil prices, but we have a framework for estimating the oil prices for our forecast because we need that. That's mostly based on the future prices in the markets, and then we make some adjustment to that, and use that. But, no, the most recent declin

Finance committee  No, we did not get that information. We searched for the information from other sources, and we could not get it. We have not made a formal request to the government as to whether they have those numbers or not. When we did the study, I think one of the issues was that this who

Finance committee  I remember the 20% interest rate as well, sir, but....

Finance committee  That's right. The study that we do—and we call it fiscal sustainability, which is a long-term study—is the sort of standard kind of exercise that most OECD countries actually do. This is to help governments and policy-makers have a framework for the future, taking into account t

Finance committee  In response to your question, maybe it's not an answer, but we normally do not measure those kind of effects, from a policy measure, whether it affects the health of the population and how a healthier population will affect the economy. That becomes the second-, third-, and the f

Finance committee  That, of course, assumes that people who put their kids into sports won't do that without that credit. That's a major assumption.

Finance committee  Sorry, what—

Finance committee  All the estimates that we have essentially take into account all the policy measures that government has introduced over time; this is always taken into account both on the positive and negative side, it doesn't really matter. The only thing, as I mentioned, that we don't take in

Finance committee  The expenditure management system, which is under the control of the Treasury Board Secretariat, was established to ensure that the spending by programs provides value for money. Because of that, there is a system in place that each department and agency has to provide indicators