Public Accounts committee  It's important for me to lead off and say that I don't want to sound dogmatic in any one approach—that we have it right and others have it wrong. I think that's the wrong perspective. Likewise, from a bureaucratic perspective, we clearly recognize the importance of a strong audit

Public Accounts committee  Thank you very much. Thank you for the opportunity to be here today. I hope I can be of some assistance in addressing questions with respect to the committee's study of vote 1 funding for the Office of the Auditor General. As you noted, the deputy minister could not be here tod

Finance committee  Yes, you bet. I'm Nicholas Leswick, assistant deputy minister of fiscal policy at the Department of Finance. Those amounts were recorded in budget 2019. They were effectively the unwinding of provisions that were made in previous periods—previous budgets and previous fall update

Finance committee  Some of the regional housing market dynamics that have played out over the last two years are definitely something we're monitoring very closely at the Department of Finance. You've seen the government take action in terms of the measures it put in place in 2016 in increasing the

Finance committee  Very respectfully, I think it's probably better that when the main estimates are ultimately tabled, TBS officials speak to the construct and engineering around that—

Finance committee  It's not that there are less taxes; it's that there are less taxes than were anticipated at the time of the fall update. There is a pullback in the forecast. Part of that is that corporate profits haven't quite played out, in terms of the profit track, as we thought they would in

Finance committee  I'll just repeat the message that the minister conveyed: we have the lowest net debt-to-GDP ratio on this internationally comparable standard in the G7.

Finance committee  It's AAA with a stable outlook.

Finance committee  I think there are a handful.

Finance committee  No, not Australia, not with a stable outlook. There are a few more AAAs, but there are just about a handful with a stable outlook: Liechtenstein, and some other....

Finance committee  As I said...a stable outlook, yes.

Finance committee  Absolutely, to completely acknowledge the point that's being made. Again, it's about the distribution of debts too. We want to maintain a growth track so that we don't unduly pull back on growth by suffocating the corporate, government, or household sectors from acquiring credit,

Finance committee  Yes, sir. We absolutely do. I do not have the metrics at my fingertips, but of course, working with partners across government, we have a keen eye on—

Finance committee  Absolutely.

Finance committee  If I could just acknowledge the question, to be very brief, indeed, we would have to consider the entire debt load that the national economy is supporting from a corporate, household, and total government basis. Again, when you talk about interest rate sensitivity, it's what is