Finance committee  Yes, we have factored in immigration levels, and our demographic assumptions are based on those from StatsCan. I don't have the numbers off the top of my head, of course—

Finance committee  —but yes, they are included.

Finance committee  When we do our reports on infrastructure programs, we have used the government's definition of infrastructure because of the nature of the program, the number of infrastructure projects. We have not decided what should be counted as infrastructure and what should not be classifie

Finance committee  We don't have specific examples because we looked at macro levels. What that means is that we looked at provincial and territorial investment plans when they were available, as well as at municipal plans, pre-announcement and post-announcement. In the presence of incrementality,

Finance committee  There was some level of displacement, but we didn't do the microanalysis, looking project by project, because I would have needed much more analysis and many more analysts than the number we have.

Finance committee  That sounds like something very plausible that has probably happened at least in part. To say that it has entirely displaced provincial or municipal spending—or the opposite—is probably too strong, but it has happened at least in part, based on what we found in our reports.

Finance committee  I don't think we have that level of granularity, because there are thousands of projects in Infrastructure Canada's database and we have not gone through each and every one of them and made that judgment call.

Finance committee  A debt anchor can be defined in a few ways. It could be the absolute level of debt or it could be the debt in proportion to the size of the economy. The government has chosen to opt for the second version: federal debt as a proportion of the economy. The government's stated goal

Finance committee  I don't understand that type of reaction, being an economist, but yes, apparently it happens.

Finance committee  Do you mean in the non-announced measures?

Finance committee  That's not what we find. In fact what we find is that in aggregate there could be $4 billion of non-announced measures, but it translates into a net minus $3.8 billion. It's thus either a net reduction in expenditures, increases in taxes or a combination of both. In your scenar

Finance committee  It could be anything that the government has not yet announced. It could be a tax increase. It could be an expenditure reduction of any sort. It can be virtually anything.

Finance committee  It's quite common, when the government has valid reasons to believe that it will indeed announce such measures. It has either made a decision already or there is a certain level of certainty with respect to actions the government will make, but it's not ready to announce it. That

Finance committee  Yes. The fact that it was a non-announced measure in the budget suggests it's more advanced and they will have to find—

Finance committee  It's laid out on page 30 of the English version.