Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Minister, for coming here.
I thought I'd try something different in the sense that while I could find points in your statement with which I disagree, I thought I'd try to be non-partisan, in the spirit of this committee, on the asset-backed commercial paper issue, because this committee agreed in a consensual way to have hearings on what went wrong and what could be done to improve the situation. And I don't think there was any partisanship in our recent meeting.
I'd like to focus on that, and if I may, I'd like to focus on the federal role, because you have said this strengthens the case for a single regulator. You have said provinces or provincial agencies were at fault. I don't really deny that, although I would point out that I think the U.S. and the U.K., who do have single regulators, did worse than Canada. So it's not a panacea or a cure-all, but I don't disagree with that angle. I think there's a lot of blame to be shared.
I would suggest that for a federal minister or a federal finance committee, our first responsibility starts with our own federal agencies. So whether the provinces were guilty or not guilty, I'd like to focus on federal agencies, federal responsibilities, and in particular OSFI, the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions.
I'm not making accusations here, but we have heard from more than one expert that to a significant extent, OSFI had inappropriate regulation that made the crisis worse than it otherwise would have been. And what I am referring to is that OSFI allegedly encouraged banks to offer conditional liquidity facilities for issue of asset-backed commercial paper rather than the international--