Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good day, members of the committee, and thank you for the invitation to appear before you today.

I am pleased to be here to discuss my office's most recent report, entitled “Economic and Fiscal Outlook”, which my office published on March 2, 2023. Our outlook provides a baseline projection to help parliamentarians gauge potential economic and fiscal outcomes under current policy settings. Our March outlook incorporated economic data up to and including February 21. Our report was released prior to the tabling of budget 2023 and the recent turbulence in global financial markets.

On April 13, my office published our issues report on budget 2023. The report is designed to assist parliamentarians in their budgetary deliberations, highlighting key issues arising from the budget, which announced $69.7 billion in new spending, measured on a gross basis.

I will now continue my remarks in English.

On balance, the outlook for real GDP growth over 2023 to 2027 presented in budget 2023 is slightly weaker compared to our March outlook, with annual growth averaging 1.6% and 1.7%, respectively. This slight difference reflects a weaker near-term outlook that includes a shallow recession in 2023 in the budget, whereas our March outlook projected the economy to stagnate over the course of the year.

In terms of the fiscal outlook, when put on a comparable basis, our adjusted March projection shows budgetary deficits over 2022-23 to 2027-28 that are, on balance, in line with the outlook presented in budget 2023.

I would now be pleased to respond to any questions you may have regarding our economic and fiscal analysis or other PBO work. Thank you.