The witness of the day is definitely Mr. Bethlenfalvy, so I guess I'm going to continue with that. I have a whole bunch of questions based on the same subject matter. I'm trying to get clarity. I understand you want to protect your corporation. But if you don't survive, somebody else will take over what you're doing today, so the idea—and I think Mr. Wallace just alluded to it, and I think everybody else around the table—is to protect the future and how we correct.
I've been hearing what you're saying. You're talking about complexity. I don't believe that. I don't believe that things have gotten too complex. For me, if I have $50 I want to put in a bank, I want a return on it. Either it's a GIC or it's dividends in an asset growth company. The reason it's gotten complex is that there have been people who have gotten greedy out there. I expect people to protect me, whether it be a securities regulator, a rating agency, my bank, or my credit union. It doesn't matter who. However, the feeling out there is that's not what is happening.
I think Mr. Mulcair asked you about assets versus non-assets. I'm still no further ahead. You're saying that some instruments are no longer being rated by your agency. What is the difference? What's stopped? Now you're saying there are instruments that are market disruptions. What is that? You're being regulated, but who's regulating you? Who's verifying that? You're assuming that the regulator is regulating you, and the regulator is assuming you're verifying what you're rating. But you're saying, no, we never rated what was being put together because that's not our job.
I still don't understand who your customers are. Are they third parties? Is your customer just a person who's issuing the issuing item or instrument? If you're not rating that instrument, could a third party actually hire you and ask you to evaluate or put a rating on that security?
I guess I'm going full circle. The idea is this. How do we prevent this from happening again? It will happen again where 1% is not good enough for a GIC and then 3% is not good enough. Eventually these instruments will get complex again.
My question is this. How do we avoid this? What happened in the past? Let's just look at the last 12 months. How can we avoid it happening in the future? What is your part in preventing this from repeating itself?