Thank you, Mr. Chair.
And thank you, gentlemen, for coming here this evening.
I don't know if it's the curse of having institutional knowledge at this place, but I remember the days, back in 2002, when John Manley wanted to basically deregulate our banks and it was us and the Bloc who had to fight that off. I find it interesting, the bragging rights about the bank situation right now.
But I'm not so pleased with them. It's good that they are making profits right now, but at the same time there's a real functional problem. You mentioned your solution is for the advance credit. We've heard that consistently here, with anywhere from $13 billion being suggested by the government, up to $60 billion being suggested by some industry analysts.
I think there needs to be some type of a working mechanism here. If it's just going to come from the public sector, that's one thing. But when you go to the bank's lending programs right now, they're at 8%, if you have good credit--up to 14%. For someone in my riding, who doesn't have as good a credit rating, it's 30%. Some of these costs are outrageous.
Is that the reason you went into your own financing and offered these attractive programs? The financing seems to be making the most money right now. You look at some of these scheduled payments, and after five years they still owe thousands of dollars. It's past the warranty time and you haven't paid off your vehicle yet.