Finance committee  Yes, to try to make apples-to-apples comparisons, exactly. The IMF and OECD do these gymnastics, and then they publish this on a quarterly basis in order to update those comparisons.

Finance committee  Indeed. Thank you for the question, because it helps establish clarification. The statistic that the minister quotes is an internationally comparable statistic. In other words, there are various adjustments made by the IMF and OECD to establish a common comparison of debt betwe

Finance committee  I'll take a stab at the answer. The $25 billion is represented by CRA, and it represents the total annual value of all tax recoveries at both the federal and provincial levels across all compliance initiatives. What's represented in the budget is a very small subset of new init

Finance committee  Nick, I have the answer. On a running basis, our cumulative change in the financial position since 2015-16 fiscal year.... Sitting as of today—so we're leading up to closing the 2017-18 fiscal year towards the end of the week—we will have rallied around $36 billion in accumulate

Finance committee  It's about $114 billion.

Finance committee  Just so I understand your question correctly, over the forecast horizon presented in the federal budget it would be approximately $114 billion.

Finance committee  The very short answer is that the methodology to implement a new pay equity regime is still under development and wasn't communicated in the budget, but the government has made a commitment to table legislation and obviously details before the end of the calendar year.

Finance committee  There are two ways to look at deficits. One is just on a nominal basis, so just straight up what is the value of deficits that the government is incurring over the forecast horizon. But, quite frankly, it probably doesn't give you the true picture of the magnitude of the deficit

Finance committee  Sorry, that would be not just interest on market debt, but interest on other interest-bearing debt, such as our pension and benefit obligations. That is a group of about a quarter billion dollars in debt that we also incur interest charges on. It's different from a coupon payment

Finance committee  Which, debt obligation?

Finance committee  I can get back to you on that. I would assume it's probably market debt, but it's hard for me to answer that with certainty. I can follow up with the clerk on that one.

Finance committee  As part of resetting the economic and fiscal framework in the budget, similar to how we do it in the fall update, we survey our group of private sector economists. The economic projections that underpin the budget are effectively a straight average of the group of 14 private sect

Finance committee  It's discretionary, but it has been standard practice for a generation now. It has changed in value from $3 billion to as high as $6 billion in previous budgets, but this budget maintained it at $3 billion over the forecast horizon.

Finance committee  —and a neutral rate of interest.

Finance committee  I would agree with the member. I mean, 80% of people in the residential mortgage market choose fixed-rate mortgages these days. The average term structure of their debt is around four years, so they're deciding to lock in. That being said, we had the same debate seven years ago