As I understand it, government policy for a while has been designed to have a degree of competition in this marketplace. We're responsible for administering at OSFI our part of the system, which is applications from anyone who would want to enter the market to do this business. As I said in my introduction, our mandate requires us to take account of the need for allowing institutions to compete effectively. So if a financial institution comes to us to set up in the mortgage insurance business, we'll assess, on a broad basis, the viability of their business plan, assuming it's reasonably viable, and their capitalization and so on, but we're then going to, in all likelihood, recommend that entity be licensed to offer the business to consumers.
There are lots of aspects of the marketplace that will affect the availability of mortgage insurance and all those kinds of things that you asked about, one of which is how many competitors there are. But there are lots of other aspects that will affect this, including capital rules, and the nature of the guarantee that's provided to private insurers, which was provided in the first place in order to provide a reasonably level playing field so private insurers could compete with public insurers, with CMHC. Without that system, banks and other financial institutions would get a break on their capital if they dealt with a government guaranteed institution, CMHC, but would not get a break if they dealt with a private insurer, and this is what the guarantee that was put in place was designed to, in part, correct.
So I think there are a lot of aspects that would affect availability of insurance, and so on, and I understand the committee wants to have perhaps a broader discussion of that. I'm certainly happy to contribute, from our perspective, as to what our role is, but our role is fairly minimal in this. We'll make an assessment of the viability and solvency of any new applicant. We'll take account of the fact that we are supposed to allow institutions to compete effectively. So we're not going to impose our business judgment on institutions' judgment. If somebody thinks they can do the business profitably and contribute, in competitive terms, we're not going to say no to that. If their plan is clearly crazy or something, which is highly unlikely, but occasionally we see applications for new institutions that are very ill-developed plans...but assuming that's not likely the case, we have a set of capital rules that will apply to protect safety, soundness, and solvency, and we'll proceed.
Again, please don't take that as any comment on an application specifically in front of us; that's our framework, and I think that framework has served the system in a lot of kinds of markets pretty well over the last couple of years.