Thank you, Mr. Chair.
A heartfelt thank you to all of you involved today, and certainly the investors. Thank you for your rational presentation and for keeping your emotions in check. I realize this is a very troubling time for you and difficult for you to discuss, so thank you.
You need to know that when this motion came forward at committee, it had all-party support to listen to the investors. I think that everybody is absolutely behind hearing your message. I think last August we were all under the premise, when this first came to light, that everyone who was involved in this--both the buyers and the sellers--were quite convinced it was both secure and liquid.
I find it very troubling to hear your comment, Ms. Miles, that you didn't even know you were invested in asset-backed paper. That will be my first question, but I do want to comment about some of what we're hearing today, about the lack of a common securities regulator. Our finance minister has been pushing for that, and I think this is a strong argument.
We hear from Mr. Elford and Ms. Urquhart that the provincial regulators--and at this point in time we're dealing with these regulations, and that's what we have, provincial regulators--are not being effective, were not effective in this role. We as a government have been monitoring it and the Bank of Canada has been monitoring it, but unfortunately that's all both the government and the Bank of Canada can do, because we have 13 regulators across the country. So I'd be interested in some more comments about that.
Also very troubling is the involvement of the foreign banks.
Ms. Miles, perhaps you could elaborate a bit more on what it was you were told. Did you understand what you were buying? As you said, you didn't even know you were buying it.