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Public Accounts committee Nothing will be corrected. We'll determine whether the information is available in other documents. This is in line with the standards in place for recording—
November 20th, 2013Committee meeting
Benoît Robidoux
Public Accounts committee You are asking excellent questions, Mr. Giguère, but again, I'm not sure I'm looking at the right line in the right table. Would you mind slowing down a bit and telling us whether you are actually referring to table 1.2?
November 20th, 2013Committee meeting
Benoît Robidoux
Public Accounts committee To the best of my knowledge, that is true. If each and every year, there's a change of some sort, a sale or outflow of those assets, the difference between the fair market value and the cost value should indeed be taken into account. A check would be necessary to determine whether it would directly affect the debt, the accumulated deficit, or whether it would be considered an expenditure.
November 20th, 2013Committee meeting
Benoît Robidoux
Public Accounts committee I am sure it doesn't appear in the Public Accounts. We're talking about crown corporations with their own bookkeeping practices. It should actually be done at the market price. We'll make sure to follow up with you. We'll try to determine whether we can find the market value of those assets.
November 20th, 2013Committee meeting
Benoît Robidoux
Public Accounts committee Mr. Chair, we believe, and this is what we have said in our document, that the strong fundamentals in Canada, whether economic, financial, or in the fiscal foundation, have led to a better performance during the global slowdown and in the recovery than is the case with some other economies.
November 20th, 2013Committee meeting
Benoît Robidoux
Public Accounts committee Well, elderly benefits were one. Clearly, these are indexed to consumer price inflation, and because of the aging of baby boomers there are obviously many more every year who pass the age of 65 and receive these payments thereafter. This was one factor that led to that growth of 5.8%.
November 20th, 2013Committee meeting
Benoît Robidoux
Public Accounts committee There are two factors. First, the reduction in tax rate has a cost to it, but again when the economy is growing, these costs will be more than offset by the growing economy. That's why you end up with still higher revenue despite the fact you reduced the taxation rate. It all depends on how much you reduce the taxation rate, but for the tax reduction we had, it was enough to be more than offset by a growing economy.
November 20th, 2013Committee meeting
Benoît Robidoux
Public Accounts committee The effective interest rates you mentioned before, 3.4%, those are market rates that reflect that structure. If we have more long-term debt and less short-term debt, this average rate will be higher. If we have more short-term debt, it will be lower. This reflects two things: a structure for debt over time, and also the fact that both long- and short-term interest rates have been falling in recent years, so a fall in the effective rate reflects when we admit new debt, we admit at lower rates than all the debt we roll over from the past.
November 20th, 2013Committee meeting
Benoît Robidoux
Public Accounts committee Yes, the difference in spending was lower than expected in 2012-13. At the same time departments had been lapsing a bit more than $10 billion compared to their appropriations. It's fairly difficult to explain from a forecasting point of view because the lapse we talk about in our forecasts between us at Finance is the actual lapse.
November 20th, 2013Committee meeting
Benoît Robidoux
Public Accounts committee I wanted to outline that the two are not the same, but effectively what happened in 2012-13 is we assumed a lapse on an accrual basis in the projection.
November 20th, 2013Committee meeting
Benoît Robidoux
Public Accounts committee We could only break it down between foreigners who owe Canadian debt and our own debt. So it's between Canadian citizens and foreigners. We don't have another breakdown on that. Foreign holding of Government of Canada venture debt has been increasing. We have more issues since the recession, something in the range of 15% to 25% of the debt.
November 20th, 2013Committee meeting
Benoît Robidoux
Public Accounts committee I will let my colleague Douglas Nevison answer that question.
November 20th, 2013Committee meeting
Benoît Robidoux
Public Accounts committee Effectively.
November 20th, 2013Committee meeting
Benoît Robidoux
Public Accounts committee Basically, taxation is growing more or less in line with GDP.
November 20th, 2013Committee meeting
Benoît Robidoux
November 20th, 2013Committee meeting
Benoît Robidoux