Public Accounts committee  There will not be an ineligibility. The program will be restructured so that they will be eligible. It will be an entitlement based on the previous year's income. It's a fundamental restructuring of the program.

Public Accounts committee  Is it how they're recorded in the current public accounts that you're looking for?

Public Accounts committee  I understand the question. I think we should start with the first leg of the question, which was about how they're displayed in the current public accounts.

Public Accounts committee  I totally understand what you're looking for. I just want to pass it to the comptroller.

Public Accounts committee  Yes, thank you.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you for the question. We don't take additional expenses related to any growth in those receivables, so effectively there are no additional expenses. It would be wound up.

Public Accounts committee  You may very well be right. I don't know whether we built that into our baseline. It's part of the fall economic statement—any sort of uptick in provisioning related to enterprise Crown corporation activity, pending an eventual economic contraction. However, you are right. That would certainly be the feed-through.

Public Accounts committee  Again, our new forecast for public debt charges was outlined in our most recent fall economic statement. Were you interested in just the nominal value of those debt charges?

Public Accounts committee  The page reference is page 51 in the fall economic statement, if you want to refer to that at some point. In the 2021-22 year, which is the year we're discussing in these public accounts, it was $24.5 billion. Over the forecast horizon, we would project those to increase to $44.8 billion over the seven-year horizon.

Public Accounts committee  We included a sensitivity analysis in our most recent budget projections. Those are also on page 247 of budget 2022, if you are interested. We show how interest rates impact both revenues and expenses. On the revenue side, you're probably wondering how that works. We have a lot of interest-bearing assets on the federal balance sheet, so higher interest rates means higher revenue.

Public Accounts committee  Regrettably, we at the Department of Finance do these projections. What can I say? Like for a lot of large financial institutions in North America, results for both the 2021 and the 2022 years far exceeded any projections. Largely, it's just a flow-through of much higher than expected economic activity and much lower than expected business writedowns of activity.

Public Accounts committee  I can come back to you with more precise kinds of line items, but for the BDC and the EDC it is mostly both pure credit—business activity—and, likewise, a whole lot less provisioning against existing credit: unwinding loan provisions that were taken in 2020 and early 2021, which fed through into revenues.

Public Accounts committee  To be clear, this math, this methodology and this calculation are entirely an IMF calculation. This is what the IMF does to put all these countries on a comparable basis. That's because the reality is that a lot of G7 countries—this is actually quite shocking—take their social security contributions, like CPP premiums, and put them against general revenues.

Public Accounts committee  No. They don't fund the accounts whatsoever. They take the premiums and throw them against general revenue, and it's like a pay-as-you-go scheme. In order to recognize that, the IMF takes our CPP and QPP accounts. I'll footnote this, because I don't love it, but they bring in—

Public Accounts committee  It's a recognition that we don't take the premiums into general revenues. Again, I feel like I'm defending an IMF position—which I've pretty much fought my entire career—in trying to reconcile some of this craziness. It's the same thing in terms of public sector pension schemes, such as employee pensions benefits for the public sector employees.