At the end of last year, Canadian households owed just over $ trillion. Mortgages make up almost three-quarters of this debt. While debt is indispensable for our modern way of life, it has been a growing preoccupation for the Bank of Canada for several years now. That is because high debt levels can make us vulnerable to negative events—individuals as well the entire economy.
Secondly, on the PEPP pace, you decided in September to slow your PEPP purchases to a moderate slower pace in the fourth quarter, but we haven’t actually seen that in any of the weekly data so far this month. So does this have to do with countering the effects of policy-tightening expectations, or how should we read this data?