I am doubly pleased because I see many familiar faces, including the relatively new reporters on the beat and those I met long before I became governor. But don’t worry – I will not disclose how long ago that was. Instead, I will focus on the topic you have asked me to discuss tonight: the macroeconomic outlook for 2008.
Apart from the cold, when I think about my time at Laval—and at CEGEP de Ste-Foy near here—I am struck by how different things were then in terms of inflation and interest rates. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, inflation was very high and variable. That created a lot of frustration.