Finance committee  Yes, we have looked at this in detail, but it looks like, given what has happened over the past couple of months, that there is more optimism that there will be an agreement. On that basis, what we are assuming in our projection is that there will be a slight negative impact from

Finance committee  We haven't really looked at it in that fashion. I think we are going to release a report on the labour market in the fall, which may look at some of these aspects, but overall, the Canadian economy is operating very close to its potential level. In that sense, you would expect th

Finance committee  Well, we are a sort of second eye, in the sense that we are providing this service to Parliament and to Canadians by using our expertise to look at the economy and the fiscal situation. This is as much as we can do. I don't know whether there is anything else I can add to that.

Finance committee  I'm sure there are many things that could cause that, such as a financial crisis or anything else, any kind of—

Finance committee  Within government control, I can't come up with something right now on that, whether there was something that big or not—

Finance committee  I wouldn't call it that until I look at the last 10 years and see what other things have happened that could cause that kind of impact.

Finance committee  Well, then, we would have to take that into account and do another study, because this is the one we did. This is the lump sum. This is the simplest way of doing it, because we don't really have full information about exactly how different provinces are going to do this, and base

Finance committee  No. That's the gross impact, as far as I know.

Finance committee  That's right.

Finance committee  As I said, we are assuming that the lump sum is going to go back. In our view, in looking at different options of reducing corporate taxes or reducing income taxes, the least efficient is the one you mentioned, namely, its going back as a lump sum to households. From an economic

Finance committee  That's correct.

Finance committee  My colleague Carleigh was the main author of that report we did, so I'll let her speak to that.

Finance committee  You can imagine that we have received a huge amount of information from the CRA. It takes time to study that and figure out exactly how we are going to use it. I think we have received all the information that we asked for, but it will take time for our staff, my colleagues, to g

Finance committee  Two things affect that, and one is the level of interest rate. In our projection we have a higher short-term and long-term interest rate relative to what the government is assuming. Also, there is the amount of deficit that will add to debt. If you look at ours, in the short-term

Finance committee  The big difference, in the first couple of years especially, is essentially on government operations. That is really something that we have arrived at by doing our own calculations, and we have a significant difference from what the government has on that. Trevor, do you want t