more health professionals, investing in better equipment, and enhancing research and innovation. the government is also focused on the delivery of other key commitments to canadians, including : • high - quality early childhood development ; • predictable and long - term funding to municipalities for critical infrastructure needs ; • meaningful action on the disparities that impede opportunities for aboriginal canadians ; and • meeting the imperatives of national defence and national security. as minister goodale said in his economic and fiscal update presentation, meeting these priorities will require ongoing fiscal discipline. it will also require attention to improving productivity. but given the current high ratio of employment to population, and given that canada ’ s population will soon begin to age rapidly, we will have to rely increasingly on productivity to raise living standards in the future. to increase productivity, we canadians need to invest in human capital, physical capital and innovation - the three drivers of productivity growth. the key will be to adapt to change through policies that promote flexibility. that ’ s why canada is investing in the skills and knowledge of our people, and is creating a competitive environment through lower taxes that encourage investment in physical capital and reward the efforts of entrepreneurs. these flexibility - enhancing policies, along with lower barriers to trade, smart regulation and openness to international investment, are the building blocks of canada ’ s modern and prosperous economy. collaboration between canada and germany is part of this effort to encourage international investment. as one example, our two countries have a long - standing relationship in science and technology. the driving force behind this relationship is the bilateral s & t cooperation agreement, signed in 1971. and there is the very successful partnership between the national research council of canada ( nrc ) and the helmholtz association of german national research centres. the canadian embassy in berlin deserves real credit for encouraging this flourishing collaboration, and promoting technology - oriented partnerships. such cooperation is critical in an increasingly connected global economy. so, too, are forward - looking initiatives such as the trade and investment enhancement agreement between canada and the eu, which would allow qualified workers to move much more easily between the eu and canada and would enhance the ability of our financial sectors to seize investment opportunities. once concluded, this agreement would present germany, europe and canada with a unique opportunity to make our economies more global, more efficient and more prosperous. now let ’ s turn to a different issue. as you know, g - 20 finance ministers and central bank governors met in berlin over the weekend. among the themes of our discussions were the

et al. ( 2022 ) use twitter to analyze the most actively discussed topics related to the covid - 19 pandemic and build a real - time indicator for the average sentiment of the users. 5 aprigliano et al. ( 2022 ) analyze around 2 million articles from four main italian newspapers and compute a text - based sentiment indicator that closely mimics the confidence indicators for households and businesses from our nso. 6 they also compute a daily economic policy uncertainty ( epu ) index both for the general economy and for specific sectors or topics. they use these indicators to nowcast the economic activity in italy showing that using a bayesian model averaging technique their indicators greatly reduce the uncertainty surrounding the short - term predictions of the main macroeconomic aggregates, especially during recessions. they also employ these indices in a weekly gdp tracker, achieving sizeable gains in forecasting accuracy. we also use credit and debit card transaction records to build models and indicators for the short - term forecast of economic activity. ardizzi et al. ( 2019 ) analyze the reaction of consumer expenditure in italy ( measured using daily data on debit card payments at the pos ) to daily epu, built using textual data from news and the social network twitter. the authors show that an increase in epu temporarily reduces debit card payments and raises the ratio of atm withdrawals to pos payments, signaling an increase in the preference for cash. we make large use of online ads on the real estate from the largest platform in italy ( the website www. immobiliare. it, the equivalent of zoopla or zillow in the uk and us ), to follow developments and prices in the housing market. loberto et al. ( 2022 ) show the potential of this new database7 to study the real estate market, while guglielminetti et al. ( 2021 ) show the impact of covid - 19 on housing demand for italian households. 8 accornero m. and moscatelli m., “ listening to the buzz : social media sentiment and retail depositors'trust ” ( 2018 ). bank of italy temi di discussione ( working paper ) no. 1165, http : / / dx. doi. org / 10. 2139 / ssrn. 3160570 astuti, v., crispino m., langiulli m., and marcucci, j., ( 202