Finance committee  It's all a matter of policy choices that the government makes or could make. For example, if we were to look at more aggressive tax compliance measures, either legislative or administrative policies in terms of actually enforcing more aggressively the legislative pieces that are

Finance committee  That is indeed the case. We looked at the comparisons done internationally before we appeared here. No distinction can be made between economic stimulus measures and economic support measures related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Most comparisons take both types of measures into acc

Finance committee  Investments and budget spending clearly increase the deficit. Before the budget, we had predicted that the debt-to-GDP ratio would stabilize at levels slightly below that. The debt-to-GDP ratio, with the budget spending, will exceed 51% and will decrease only slightly over the ne

Finance committee  That's a very good point, sir. We often face the same issue when we are looking at policies or costings that apply nationally. When we look at the territories, the data is not as robust. We often imply that the impacts would be broadly similar in the territories to what they woul

Finance committee  I have no opinion on whether it is appropriate or not. I can reiterate what I previously said. In its fall economic update, the government said it would use $70 billion to $100 billion to stimulate the economy and help it recover to ensure that labour market indicators would re

Finance committee  Like the governor said, I will probably identify the same risks as he did. The biggest risk, by far, is how the pandemic evolves and, flowing from that, how Canadians behave. What I mean by that is how secure they feel to resume what will be the new normal if it is back to where

Finance committee  It's a tough question to answer because to be certain of that answer would require running a sadistic experiment, in which two identical countries would be subject to very different treatments. One thing is sure. Without government support, widespread support, there would have b

Finance committee  It is indeed a risk, and we saw that in the government's budget. The government's budget assumes slightly higher interest rates than we have assumed, and that has led the interest cost of the government to increase by about $17 billion over a five-year horizon, compared with ou

Finance committee  Yes, indeed. Some of it is support measures for COVID-19, so it's not stimulus per se. When we heard the Minister of Finance in the fall economic statement, it was to be $70 billion to $100 billion additional to kick-start the economy. That was understood, at least by me, to be

Finance committee  I would say that most government spending leads to increased economic activity. It's a matter of magnitude as to what the different impacts are of different government investments or spending. For example, if you're sending money or providing income support to individuals, it has

Finance committee  I haven't seen any indication to that effect in the budget. We have seen the fiscal forecast until 2025-26. Even over that horizon, the government shows a decreasing deficit, but it's still a deficit of about 1% of GDP, if my memory serves me correctly. This would lead to a debt

Finance committee  Yes, I have heard that very often, that it's not a concern to be had about the increasing level of debt because the current debt servicing costs are very low, which is true. However, that's taking the point of view that because the cost to service that debt is low now, the debt t

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. Thank you for the invitation to appear before you today to discuss Canada's economic and fiscal outlook. I am also pleased to highlight some key issues arising from budget 2021, tabled on April 19. I

Transport committee  That's a good question, to which, unfortunately, I don't have any answers because we didn't look at many of their projects. We looked at the projects for which they provided us information, and these are projects that are mostly in the public domain.

Transport committee  Again, it's a difficult question to answer. As I mentioned in my opening remarks, we will be doing a more fulsome study of the bank, and we will be using benchmarking in that report with other institutions and other programs of a similar nature. So hopefully by that time, we wi