Finance committee  It's a tough question, but it's one I have a lot of experience with. I started in the Department of Finance in 1977, and that debate has been going on every single minute since then.

Finance committee  Invariably, every new Minister of Finance wants you to put out something positive, because you don't want to depress markets. With over 30 years of experience, I've come to see that the only way is to do the best forecast you possibly can, and whether that's viewed as pessimistic

Finance committee  No, and as I've already said, I don't think it's the responsibility of a private bank to provide that kind of service. If we want to establish a system of governance, I think that responsibility should be assigned to a rating agency or an organization responsible for regulating s

Finance committee  Absolutely, but Canada can't do it alone. It has to be done in an international context. I think that's an inevitable result of the discussions that are going to be held on April 2 by the G20, and held within each country. The regulation in the United States is so fragmented rela

Finance committee  We wrote a lot about the situation regarding mortgage loans in the United States, but we wrote nothing about the situation involving commercial paper in Canada. After all, we compete with the other institutions. We didn't give them our information. I can tell you, however, that n

Finance committee  As I said earlier in response to a question, I believe that the challenges are enormous in the medium term. In view of the burden of their debt, the United States will have to do what Canada did in 1995 and 1996. However, I doubt it's capable of doing so. At that time, it was the

Finance committee  That's a risk, but it would be a mistake by the central banks. Everyone talks about the basic expansion of money in the United States. They can control that in a few months, if they want. The risk is keeping interest rates too low for too long, as Alan Greenspan did. That was a s

Finance committee  There are remarkable situations on both sides. The Bank of Canada rate is 0.5% and mortgages are extremely low. In addition, bank margins are extremely low, probably the lowest ever seen. The banks will be trying to restore their margins to normal levels. I'm convinced we'll see

Finance committee  I agree that the government has its share of responsibility, but it's too simple to limit oneself to that. I also blame the people responsible for regulation. As I said, I don't agree with Alan Greenspan when he says that high-risk mortgages were acceptable in 2000 and 2001. The

Finance committee  The government's estimate is simple. They haven't publicly changed it since January 27.

Finance committee  We all know that. Was $37 billion the hit? I can't remember precisely the number. We have as our cumulative total just slightly under $40 billion for the fiscal year 2009, and $41 billion, slightly over. The only difference between the two is that I substituted our current econom

Finance committee  Well, ours is $18 billion higher than theirs.

Finance committee  This is roughly a difference of $9 billion in each of those years. Basically, that's taking the level of nominal GDP difference and multiplying it by the 15% average tax rate. Revenues divided by GDP is roughly 15%. So on average government taxed 15% of nominal income. I looked a

Finance committee  I don't buy the line of argument that the media is distorting it. The news is terrible, and there's no way around it. In fact, for every example you could put to me where you think the media has exaggerated the downside, I could point to a counter-example.

Finance committee  We have had, in the last week, four increases in key variables in the U.S. housing market. I pick the U.S. housing market as an example because that's one of the criteria we need in Canada. We need the U.S. housing market to get back. We've had an increase in housing starts, resa