Government Operations committee  Just to promote the same idea, that was the reconciliation table I was speaking to. We have tried to establish the same reconciliation in our estimates. We take the expense plan as presented in the budget and reconcile it to the ultimate spending plan cash authorities as presente

Government Operations committee  Thank you for the question, Mr. Chair. How do you make it easy? Well....

Government Operations committee  Right, yes. I don't know that it will ever be easy, to be quite honest. I think, quite frankly, you need to come to grips to some extent, both as a bureaucracy and as a parliamentary committee, with what the estimates are. The budget effectively lays out the spending, the exp

Government Operations committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thanks for the opportunity to be here today. My name is Nick Leswick. I am the assistant deputy minister of the economic and fiscal policy branch in Department of Finance Canada, with overall responsibility for economic and fiscal forecasting and the produc

Public Accounts committee  I completely understand, Mr. Chair, and that goes back to the way the member opened his comments, which is that deductibility and some distribution of that risk is exactly what we're looking at. As the housing market grows and household formation continues to slope on an upward t

Public Accounts committee  I can't speak to what's under consideration within the department, but the points the member is raising are good ones that we need to be mindful of.

Public Accounts committee  It's very clear the committee is asking for more detail with respect to, as you say, the short end of the curve.

Public Accounts committee  I won't argue with the question or the logic that the member presents. I think it's something that we are looking at in the department, in terms of lender risk sharing, so that there's an appropriate distribution of the benefits and the costs across the spectrum of that agreement

Public Accounts committee  Absolutely.

Public Accounts committee  CMHC is stamping them, yes. They're wholly backed by CMHC, and in effect the government, so the risk is on us. It's just that the exposure, I guess, to some extent, or the benefits.... The exposure to the housing market is not just held wholly within the lending institution.

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, I understand what the member is saying. In terms of lender risk sharing and the CMHC products, both insurance and the securitization program, we're looking at those.

Public Accounts committee  The government has acted five times in the housing market since 2012 to effectively condense amortization periods, to increase down payment requirements and so on—credit score requirements—to mitigate any potential housing bubble or adverse housing shock.

Public Accounts committee  I'll be very quick. With respect to CMHC, it does provide, in its annual report, the full detail of its stress-testing scenarios. It takes its own balance sheets and stress-tests them with various economic shocks. One of the most extreme shocks is a U.S.-style housing collaps

Public Accounts committee  Yes, exactly. It imposes the equivalent of a U.S.-style housing crisis in Canada—sorry, I wasn't clear in my first answer. Unemployment would go from 7% to about 11% or 12%. Housing prices would decline by about 20% to 30%, harmonized across the country. It shows the effect on th

Public Accounts committee  I did right up until the last statement, in the sense that—