Finance committee  Hindsight is a beautiful thing. That evolved with other participants, Canadian banks, regulators, who came up with that language, and it was active in the Canadian markets through the 1990s. We recognized, when we made our statement in January of 2007, that we would no longer acc

Finance committee  No, not that I'm aware of.

Finance committee  I think the key is not to say this should have been double-A or triple-A or single-A, and second-guess. I think the key is to just have oversight. Rating agencies have had no oversight. The first act was really in 2006, in Congress. So it's early days. The analogy I like to look

Finance committee  I'm not sure I'd choose those words, but—

Finance committee  Well, there are really four global rating agencies. We're one of four, and the other three are American. Two of them operate here in Canada.

Finance committee  I think that's a fair statement. What we're concerned about is having asymmetric regulation. When you're up against three very powerful American rating agencies and trying to compete in markets, such as the U.S. and Europe, having a level playing field is very important, both fro

Finance committee  Based on what we knew, we stood by our ratings. Now we win. We continue to write a big chunk of the notes, and they're single-A, but obviously with different characteristics through the Montreal accord. We do rate the bank-sponsored programs triple-A, R1 high, with global liquidi

Finance committee  You've said a lot of things. First, we did focus on the underlying credit value, and we stand behind our ratings and continue to do so.

Finance committee  What we knew at the time, based on the assets and the portfolio.... First, what we'd do differently is the credit spread movements that were outlier credit spread movements. We've since changed our models to incorporate the credit spread movement that we saw, which is similar to

Finance committee  That's a great question. First of all, I would say at the outset, I know Canadians don't like to boast. I wouldn't boast too much about our Canadian banks, because who has a crystal ball better than mine? Who knows what's around the corner? One thing about banks: no risk, no ban

Finance committee  Those are all very good questions. I think the number one thing I keep coming back to is putting our opinions into the market. Again, if I may quote from the G-20—

Finance committee  From time to time we have customers who do that and who say, give us a third-party independent assessment of this portfolio, and that does occur.

Finance committee  Well, we do take note of what governments are saying and what they want us to do.

Finance committee  They say that rating agencies have an important role in providing unbiased information and assessment to markets. That, we do believe, is a fundamental role, that more opinions with more information—and that's what it is. I would never counsel anyone to just use a rating to come

Finance committee  Sorry, could you repeat that question?