Environment committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. It's a pleasure to be here. It's my first appearance before the environment committee. I have to admit that I'm a bit nervous seeing unknown faces and not knowing what to expect yet, but so far I have a very good impression, so I'm becoming less and less nervous.

Environment committee  Thank you.

Finance committee  It's going up by $1.8 billion in cash terms.

Finance committee  Yes.

Finance committee  Historically speaking, our projected increase in the Bank of Canada rate isn't all that high. Canada has experienced rates between 18% and 20% in the past. If the Bank of Canada's policy rate went from 1.75% to 2.75%, it would be significant in absolute terms, but not that high in relative terms.

Finance committee  I wouldn't call it worrisome, but I wouldn't call it normal either. As I mentioned in my opening statement, our projections assume that no new measures or major policy changes are introduced. For our projections, we assume a status quo in policy actions. We look at the effects of economic changes over the long term that are a bit more predictable, such as demographic changes.

Finance committee  That would obviously slow down the pace of implementation for that stream of the program. These are questions that Infrastructure Canada officials would be in a very good position to answer, and they would be able to provide you with specific examples, I'm sure.

Finance committee  These are very harsh words, so I will not venture into these types of adjectives. We looked at the impact of putting a price on carbon in Canada, the economic impact, and what we found was a 0.1% impact on GDP, a negative impact on GDP, per year. It's a level difference, a 0.1% difference.

Finance committee  In the provinces where the federal backstop is in place.

Finance committee  I don't remember off of the top of my head. Maybe Jason has a better memory than I do because he's younger, but maybe not.

Finance committee  No, we don't take that into account when we look specifically at the infrastructure programs. We take that into account when we do our macroeconomic projections, but when we look specifically at infrastructure programs we don't take that into account, because that would require second- and third-order impacts, and it would require dynamically estimating the impacts of these programs, which would be significantly more complex.

Finance committee  What I'd say is that we have not been made aware of any instances where provinces, territories or municipalities did not cough up their share of the program funding that they were supposed to provide under the agreements. What we have seen at the aggregate impact is that some provinces and territories have displaced a portion of the funding in order for them to meet the matching requirements.

Finance committee  Yes. These types of government policies that have been announced and implemented are included in our forecast.

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.