Finance committee  It's a methodology judgment. Projection is done through models and also through the judgment of those who are using those models. Obviously every forecaster has their own view of how things will develop and our view might be a little bit different from what the private sector has

Finance committee  Nothing really. You use models that are pretty standard in general. Some private sector forecasters don't even use a model, they use their judgment essentially, and it's different. Each organization uses a different approach to these things. But everybody is using the framework o

Finance committee  Information is always valuable for people like us who are in the business of projection, and obviously forward guidance by the Bank of Canada would be helpful in that sense. If they do not do that then we don't really know exactly what their views are on how interest rates are go

Finance committee  Yes, they will spend more, obviously. But, typically, if you estimate the impact of a tax rate decline, it would never pay for itself under normal circumstances. The amount of the increase in revenues as a result of the stimulus impact of tax is never going to be sufficient to pa

Finance committee  That's correct.

Finance committee  Not necessarily; corporate taxes typically increase because of the increase in activities, but we can't really attribute all the increase in business activities to the reduction in corporate tax rates. As I said, all we have to compare it to is what would have been the case had t

Finance committee  It is certainly a factor, but it's definitely not the only factor that enters into the decision of a business to locate its business. Many different factors would affect that, but certainly taxes would be an important factor, absolutely.

Finance committee  I wouldn't be able to comment on that. It's not something that we have studied now, sorry.

Finance committee  Oh, sir, that's a dangerous—

Finance committee  This is your business, not ours. That's a policy choice, really. I'm serious. It's a policy choice. Those kinds of decisions really have to be based on many different things that we do not take into account in our business. There are issues of equity, efficiency, and what the ob

Finance committee  We have essentially taken that into account in our projections of interest rates. The reason that interest rates show a rising profile is that the U.S. will stop the quantitative easing and rates will gradually increase in the U.S., and the same thing in Canada. Now the question

Finance committee  There will be an impact, definitely, yes.

Finance committee  Driving the interest rates will have a negative impact on economic activity.

Finance committee  Well, if it goes beyond, we have measures of how a 1% increase in interest rates would affect the economic activity. The data is actually provided in the budget documents, normally, by the Department of Finance. I don't recall the exact number right now, but there is going to be

Finance committee  No, we have not done that study. Actually, it's interesting, the decline in oil prices. The Brent and WTI have been more in decline than the Western Canadian Select price, which is actually beneficial for Canada because most of the Alberta oil is sold at Western Canadian Select