Thank you.
I appreciate John's feelings that this issue is a fait accompli, or his perception that there were no concerns raised at all, but that was certainly not my read of discussions. We've had a number of presenters indicating that they felt it would be important to attach some sort of conditions to the motion.
We had very clear wording presented to us from the Desjardins group, and we also had some suggested wording from the Real Estate Association, and others felt that it was important to ensure safeguards were put in place around this proposal.
This is not a cut and dried issue; it is not one in which there is absolute unanimity. There were all kinds of concerns raised, and it's not appropriate to simply hear a number of witnesses, as we've done all afternoon, and then simply have no discussion as a committee. How are we going to handle these concerns? Is there a way we could present some amendments? Are there some qualifiers we could attach? Should we invite Finance officials to answer some questions about what studies they've done? Should we ask for a brief in terms of the impact of this on potential access by consumers all across Canada for mortgage insurance? Are there any studies to show that there's a problem now? Are there certain areas of the population now not benefiting from mortgage insurance at CMHC? Is it out of reach for some? What's the general lay of the land? Surely to goodness, we would want to give this some thought. Why did we go through this?