Finance committee  Absolutely.

Finance committee  Absolutely, and we're hoping that the manufacturing sector will make capital investments to enhance their capacity and respond to demand from markets such as the United States. It's all factored in, but I guess at a higher level I think we're seeing some weakness in Q4. We and

Public Accounts committee  I would add only a couple of other points. One is the foreign exchange gains. A lot of crown corporations hold financial assets in U.S. dollars, which translate to a Canadian dollar equivalent for the purposes of public accounts.

Public Accounts committee  It is our foreign exchange account in general, our foreign exchange holdings held at the Bank of Canada, which is in the order of magnitude of around $60 billion. Some part of that...I don't want to put a number on the table, but about half of it is held is U.S.-dollar assets.

Public Accounts committee  The debt-to-GDP ratio is effectively a crude metric, with debt on top, as we calibrate it. It's just the total accumulated deficit of the federal government over the size our economy. It really just gives an indication to two primary audiences: one is investors, the folks who hol

Public Accounts committee  That comparison is on page— Excuse me, Mr. Chair. I just want to make sure everyone has the right page in front of them.

Public Accounts committee  To get to a level of international comparability there have to be some kind of inputs and outputs so that we're all talking about the same type of debt. For basic understanding, we have a highly decentralized federation, in the sense that there are many spending obligations that

Public Accounts committee  To answer your first question, the financial statement discussion analysis should give you a picture at the highest level of what some of the one-off gains are. We referenced these one-off gains to other revenues in the context of crown corporations here. For more detail, you'd

Public Accounts committee  I don't have the ratio at the tip of my fingers, but I think the direction in which the member is going is correct. The size in that balance sheet is being driven by the size of the long book, in terms of CMHC's underwriting of mortgages with high loan-to-value ratios.

Public Accounts committee  No, but I will reference page 1.9 in volume 1, which shows you the interest ratio on public debt charges since 1990. It shows the downward trajectory that the comptroller general was speaking to.

Public Accounts committee  It's immediate, and there are two reasons for this. One is that, as the comptroller general was saying, we borrow across the yield curve. We have our debt management strategy, which tries to manage its cost and risk dynamics. One is cost. Shorter-term borrowing is less costly,

Public Accounts committee  I'll just say that the C.D. Howe Institute does a report card for all federal and provincial governments, and they grade us in terms of transparency and just general results—results in terms of bias and accuracy—and the federal government is at number two. We got an A-minus in th

Public Accounts committee  I don't have the the debt management strategy in front of me, but if you're reading it from the debt management strategy, yes, it is accurate.

Public Accounts committee  Absolutely. I don't author the debt strategy, so I'm not super-intimate with the numbers you're referencing, but some principle is in play. I think the member is right: with, effectively, a yield curve that is flatter than at any time in history, why aren't we locking in at low

Public Accounts committee  We have to work with the Bank of Canada to ensure that.... Liquidity is important for us too, because there's a need for some price discovery. We need to know what creditors there are and what the price is for shorter-term yields. We need, then, to ensure the right kind of liquid