Finance committee  Well, I think what it does is it enables us to expand our work in new directions. Given the budget that we had, we were somewhat constrained. I mean, as far as I'm concerned, it's the more the merrier, if you will. We're very excited about this because we're able to do things that we really didn't have the resources for before, and we'll have someone who will really focus.

Finance committee  We're working on it. How's that? This is a very difficult area. It isn't easy to determine what works in education, because it's difficult to isolate cause and effect. We're working on trying to test at least to make sure that we do get results from the products that we do have.

Finance committee  We've undertaken some pilots on that and we're actually working with two cooperatives up north right now. We've prepared some special information for them. We have two modules done. We are in the process this year of rolling out those two modules across the north, and we are planning to do more.

Finance committee  The only thing I would say is that we're very anxious to get our hands on some of that money, as well as the leaders, so that we can actually do some of that. We think there's a real need for coordination. We've seen the same things you've seen, and we're looking forward, at a minimum, to starting by creating a portal to gather all that information, so that people know what is available.

Finance committee  This would be a web portal.

Finance committee  Yes.

Finance committee  Yes. We have looked at how to deal with the recommendations. That is not to say that all of the recommendations will be met. A lot of them are out of my purview, so they belong to other areas. That's one of the reasons we have established an interdepartmental committee—to raise the issue with others.

Finance committee  That's quite a long list, as a matter of fact, but thank you. We have spent a long time developing a lot of different tools, as a matter of fact. We have approximately 60 different tools just for information to Canadians. We've developed a lot of calculators, for example. We talked quite a bit about credit cards earlier.

Finance committee  Certainly from our perspective that is the correct definition.

Finance committee  It's past the stage of planning now. We have a website we hope Canadians will go to, because we want to let them know what's going on for November. We've been working very hard with all sorts of organizations—public sector, private sector, volunteer sector—to get them to participate in Financial Literacy Month, the month of November.

Finance committee  In 2007, we were given the mandate to focus first and foremost on young people and to develop youth programs specifically. The first program we created was for 15 to 18 year olds, called the Young Workers Zone. It is for school-aged youth; it has to be offered in schools. Three-and-a-half years ago, we started spreading the importance of financial literacy and ensuring that schools offered the program.

Finance committee  I will start. Since the agency I head will oversee this position and since we are responsible for implementing this legislation, naturally we have started planning and have been using the 30 recommendations in the report you mentioned as a guide. Planning is already under way. Obviously, nothing has been finalized given that we don't have a leader yet.

Finance committee  Indeed, we've taken a multi-pronged approach just because it is such an important product for most Canadians. We've actually tried to expand the potential area for delivery of that kind of learning. In the last couple of years, we've spent a lot of time with mortgage brokers and realtors to make sure they have the information that we have so they can present it to their clients, especially first-time buyers, who really are fairly new to what a mortgage means, and to make sure they have the tools to help those clients understand what they're getting into—with the mortgage brokers and the realtors in both cases—and that has helped a lot.

Finance committee  I think we've spent quite a bit of time already—and we plan to spend a whole lot more time—on these issues related to trying to give consumers the information they need around investments. We're trying to work with multiple relationships with various other regulatory agencies to bolster the information we have for them.

Finance committee  That is true, but fortunately, according to the most recent survey that we conducted in 2009, the percentage of adult Canadians who do not have a bank account is less than half a per cent.