Just so you have an understanding, they are a package because it's an attempt to simply give the government the latitude to be able to oversee this area, to put in place criteria through the existing regulation process that will help measure outcomes and provide some way to ensure equality of access by region and by income strata.
The last amendment reflects a need we heard during the panel discussions for some sort of accountability on the part of the minister and the government to Parliament in terms of the public policy performance of mortgage insurers. It allows for tracking of acceptance and denial of insurance by geographic or demographic area, which will facilitate at least the beginning of an analysis of the delivery of services, and that is really absent at the present time. Hopefully it will improve in quality through the use of more sophisticated tools as we progress and as time goes by.
We can look at other models out there that might be a guide for the government in applying these amendments. I looked specifically at the U.S. Home Mortgage Disclosure Act; that was very useful, because they put in place some very specific amendments to try to protect against discriminatory behaviour on the part of mortgage insurers. It would make it possible for Canada to monitor mortgage delivery and the role of mortgage insurance so that we could modify and fine-tune our own system to better serve Canadians. As many know, the American reporting requirements are much more stringent than those in Canada.
In conclusion, through this whole process, if the government and the applicants who are going to apply for a part of this mortgage insurance piece are truly committed to competition, which I accept—and as I said yesterday, I'm not opposed to competition; I just want some guarantees and oversight—then I think we have to let them compete as socially responsible providers through their performance as reported against public policy criteria, and that's all these amendments attempt to do.
I hope you'll seriously consider them both, and although I've spoken to both of them, I realize you now have to go back to the first one and take them one by one.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.