Finance committee  I think both factors do have an impact on the currency. As I said in my opening statement, the Canadian dollar does tend to move with the price of oil. That's because we're a net exporter of oil. When oil prices go up, foreigners have to buy more Canadian dollars to basically b

Finance committee  Monetary policy is focused on returning inflation to target over the medium term, and the value of the dollar is determined in markets. I think the focus on inflation is the best contribution that Canadian monetary policy can make to the economic and financial welfare of Canada,

Finance committee  Firms continue to face good financial conditions and to have solid balance sheets. That continues to be the case. We see investment picking up going forward. We're hearing from manufacturers, when we talk to them, that investment intentions have picked up and so have employment

Finance committee  Thank you for your question. The key thing to keep in mind is that we make a constant assumption for the dollar. As you mentioned, it was 86¢. Financial conditions more broadly have eased after the monetary policy action in January, including the dollar. That, of course, has an

Finance committee  Chart 15 is trying to take a broader view of the labour market than just what we get from the usual definition of the unemployment rate. We construct a measure that takes account of longer-term unemployment, underutilization of labour, wage increases. What we see is that several

Finance committee  Yes. Our assessment is that the decline in oil prices from the middle of last year would raise U.S. GDP by the end of 2016 by about one percentage point.

Finance committee  I can't comment on federal policy. The positive for U.S. growth, though, is a positive for Canada.

Finance committee  We've said that when higher rates do come about in the U.S., they're likely to be associated with a stronger U.S. economy. It's the stronger U.S. economy that would really be—

Finance committee  Not necessarily. The bank targets inflation in Canada. The decisions regarding monetary policy in Canada would be based on the outlook for inflation.

Finance committee  Certainly.

Finance committee  As I said, we forecast that in the absence of any monetary policy response and any other shocks, the decline would have lowered output and economic activity in Canada.

Finance committee  Of course there would have been an impact on employment also.

Finance committee  We see the trend underlying real growth in Canada as just below 2%. That is somewhat slower than, say, before the global economic and financial crisis in the mid-2000s, but a lot of it is due to just the fact that we have slower labour force growth because of an aging population.

Finance committee  As I mentioned, we don't actually produce a forecast of oil prices. We make an assumption that they stay near their recent levels. We do of course analyze the risks around that assumption. There are both upside and downside risks to the $60 assumption we made for Brent oil prices

Finance committee  As I said, we make an assumption. There's a lot of uncertainty around that, of course.