Mr. Chairman, my view is that there will be consolidation.
There will be a consolidation of platforms in Europe, but you nevertheless have to understand that Canada is a small jurisdiction in economic terms. You have to be realistic.
In addition, over-the-counter activity is already significant and will continue to be so. Our challenge is to ensure that we can build a standardized and transparent market that is also accessible to all players and all persons concerned. The worst thing we could do right now would be to make a decision that would ultimately favour a single elite group of major emitters.
We propose a platform with the Chicago Climate Exchange. We're going to try as far as possible to meet the standards of the CCX, which I sense will be the dominant platform in the United States, once the U.S. Congress has decided this question. That will likely happen because draft legislation to that effect has already been tabled.
The Montreal Exchange has tried as far as possible to harmonize its practices with those found in Europe and the United States. That's why we decided to associate with the CCX. There will be over-the-counter activity, and that's understandable. It may be another market, such as the Toronto Stock Exchange, that will do it, but as regards specifically derivative activity, it's not just a matter of knowing which exchange does it. That exchange also has to be able to offer counter-party risk management, that clearing corporation I told you about earlier. There's only one in Canada, and it's the property of the Montreal Stock Exchange. Without that clearing corporation, there won't be any liquidity. That has to be clearly understood.
To answer your question more specifically, I'd say there will continue to be a large over-the-counter market, and you can't do anything about that, but we at least have to try to adopt another, more transparent vehicle, a standardized market such as that of the Montreal Stock Exchange.