Thank you, Chair, and thank you, witnesses.
It's a bit of an unusual day when I have the CM and E and the CAW talking from the same hymn book—they may not be on the same song sheet but at least from the same hymn book—and the TD being a bit of an agnostic here.
I just note in passing that half of the tax base in the mini budget in November was taken up by a GST cut, which pretty well does nothing for any of you. From what I can see, all it does is, in effect, create more inflation and higher interest rates, which leads me to my first question, directed to Mr. Myers—that is, the cost of money and the credit crunch. I think what you said was it's difficult to raise money. How does that relate to the sub-prime crisis that's going on in the U.S.? How is that spilling over to you?
My second question has to do with the differential rise in the strength of the Canadian dollar versus the U.S. dollar. I wonder what Mr. Drummond thinks of Mr. Stanford's analysis on that.
My third question was the comment by Mr. Stanford on controlling the pace of resource development and foreign takeover reviews. I wonder, Mr. Myers, if you could comment on that as well.
So I appreciate that those are a number of questions, but I think we may have a useful dialogue if we get some conversation among the panellists.