Finance committee  We assumed essentially, as an operating assumption for years three, four, and five, that equalization would grow at roughly 3.5% per year.

Finance committee  That was purely an operating assumption.

Public Accounts committee  No, I don't.

Public Accounts committee  I think for the year that's currently under way the government is planning on a debt reduction of $10 billion. I would think this would be sufficient to ensure that the books stay at least in balance. For future years, the government is planning on a debt reduction of $3 billion

Public Accounts committee  Sure, I can give you a quick answer to that. The government announced that it would achieve that target three years ahead of when it was initially announced, so in 2011-12.

Public Accounts committee  I can answer that. About 12% of that is owed to foreign lenders, and I distinguish between the amounts of debt that are owed to foreign lenders versus the debt that's actually denominated in foreign currencies. The latter is an even smaller amount. It's in the order of 2% to 3%.

Public Accounts committee  I believe the significant difference reflects an actuarial adjustment to pension benefits reflecting legislative changes that were previously made to improve the integration of the CPP and the public sector pension plans. There was a problem with the integration whereby previousl

Public Accounts committee  That's correct. The public sector pension plan and the CPP plan are integrated. Therefore, when a public servant receives this CPP contribution, there is actually only one cheque, but the way that's effected is that the public sector portion is reduced to reflect the CPP benefit.

Public Accounts committee  That's how it used to work, and that is the way it works now. The change was put in place to correct for the fact that under the previous legislation the reduction in the public sector benefits was more than warranted by the CPP benefit that the employee received. Just to use a v

Public Accounts committee  It's the large bulk of it.

Public Accounts committee  It's about $3 billion, as I recall. I'd have to get an exact number, but it's significant.

Public Accounts committee  Over time--

Public Accounts committee  This is the value of our foreign currency holdings that are converted into Canadian dollars. Therefore, for unchanged currency holdings, when the Canadian dollar appreciates, the value in Canadian dollars goes down, and that's what you're seeing.

Public Accounts committee  What we're looking at is the value of our foreign-denominated currency expressed in Canadian dollars. Therefore, when the currency appreciates, the Canadian dollar value goes down.

Public Accounts committee  We don't have an estimate of that. In fact, one could only calculate the amount based on detailed revenue data that becomes available more or less two years after the fact.