I'll take a good stab at this, Mr. Chair.
There is a very common misunderstanding about what the Bank of Canada rate is. The Bank of Canada rate is really a short-term overnight rate that affects maybe 1% of the borrowing of Canada's banks. So for the rest of their funding, as we previously mentioned, they have to go to other markets and make sure they have matched their funds. And those funds, as we appreciate, are very expensive. So two factors are at work right now with the Canadian banks. One is the expensive cost of funding outside of the Bank of Canada, and the second is the risk profile.
It's my job to make sure that everybody is extremely confident in Canada's banks, and obviously they are. But you may have noticed in the last first quarter results we had from major banks that there were increases in writeoffs and losses and there were more provisions being taken by banks--going into this recessionary climate--for credit losses. I suspect we're going to see that continue.
With respect to the kinds of products.... Mr. Wallace, you'd probably be very happy if you had a variable mortgage, because you'd be getting a letter stating that the variable mortgage was going down. As you know, the mortgage rates are going down--