First, let me just say that I object to your characterization that EDC and BDC are being left with the questionable loans and the banks are creaming off the crop. In fact, if you look at the portfolio of BDC in particular, you will find that these are not the questionable loans; they're in the prime loan territory. In EDC it's not a question of our taking the good ones and their taking the poor ones. We've been a partnership in all these loans. So I really don't think this characterization is what's going on in the Canadian credit market.
I'll come back to the point you raised on the cost of credit. A Canadian bank that wants to raise five-year funding would face Government of Canada plus 300 basis points. Two years ago, you would have gotten a commercial real estate mortgage from a Canadian bank at probably the Government of Canada rate plus 175. How can you do that right now? Their cost is plus 300, so of course the cost of credit has gone up. Prime has gone down to 250. The banks' cost of funds has not gone down in parallel with prime, so of course the pricing has become an issue.
There's an access to credit issue, not from the banks but, as you say, from the non-banks. But absolutely, there's a pricing of credit issue, and that is because the costs faced, because of the difficulties in the corporate bond market, have not gone down commensurately.