First of all, Mr. Chairman, Mr. McKay, the potential pressure from financial institutions or from the political leadership on the Bank of Canada is always there anyway. In other words, the bank governors can read newspapers too, and understand what sort of pressure is out there in the marketplace, economically and politically.
The political pressure can take the face of something we recently saw in the United States, where the U.S. Fed exploited some little-used powers and broadly expanded its activities by way of, for instance, bailing out Bear Stearns. The next thing we found was that Congress had many more things it would like the Fed to do. Perhaps embarrassingly from my perspective, the U.S. Fed immediately turned around and underwrote a portfolio of student loans. That's something I would never have expected to see.
One of the things that legislation can do is construct a wall around the governor that says, “Well, that's very interesting, Mr. Minister or Mr. MP, that you would like me to extend liquidity in this way, but the legislation says I can't.” That can be an important defence.