Finance committee  We do, in fact, account for any kind of change. It is standardized to a certain quantity and then the price, whether that's per gram, per half kilogram, per pound, per litre or whatever it is. We do, in fact, absolutely account for changes in the quantity.

Finance committee  First, there's a bit of a conceptual difference here. I think it's important. We don't measure specifically the cost of living, per se. We have other measures that I've talked about, such as market basket measure and poverty, and we talked about household expenditures by quintile

Finance committee  We have them in the shelter, and then there's a breakdown from furnishings to—

Finance committee  It's owner accommodation, as well as the rental index, depending on age.

Finance committee  It's over time.

Finance committee  It is amortized over the period of time that you pay your mortgage and you pay your insurance—

Finance committee  Shelter comprises 30%—

Finance committee  To my knowledge, we did not do it, but I will ask Ms. Ertl to clarify the relationship between the increase in consumer goods and the increase in household spending.

Finance committee  The answer is an absolute yes. As I mentioned earlier, every single year we take stock of what Canadians spend on what as a percentage of their overall picture of expenditures, and the weight is dependent upon what those data tell us. At the moment, that number is 1.43%. If in fa

Finance committee  You're absolutely right that the residential investment in real estate as a proportion of the overall [Technical difficulty—Editor] quite a bit. Unfortunately, the other factor that you talked about, the business investment, in general overall has gone down. So you see one going

Finance committee  [Technical difficulty—Editor] on it, as we see. I think that even in my own lifetime we have seen higher CPI costs. The numbers we show are benchmarked to the same kind of number back in 2003, so it's not unprecedented. In fact, in some of our past, we've seen inflation rates muc

Finance committee  First, just let me make it as clear as clear can be. The purchase of used cars is included in the CPI. Not everybody buys a used car, of course. I've bought used cars. Not everybody buys a used car every month, or for that matter, every year. When you look at that basket overall,

Finance committee  Quite frankly, that does not fall within our purview. You would have to ask that question to our colleagues who are involved in solution finding and policy development. They are the ones who could talk about working with other levels of government and the distribution of public f

Finance committee  It depends on the location. Is it a rural or urban area? What is the current situation? What is the demographic population component? Of course we can provide assistance when it comes to components in order to find a solution that fits local demand. This is not a Canada-wide si

Finance committee  Yes, of course. We have data from the census and other sources. We can send it to you or you can find it on our website. We have a centre for housing statistics that could be useful to you. Also, if you have a specific community in mind, we can help you find that kind of informat