Thank you, Chair.
Thank you, Governor. Thank you Deputy Governor. After Mr. McCallum and Mr. Mulcair's interventions, I feel relieved of the obligation to say something nice about you.
I want to pursue the noises about your taking on a macro-prudential role in the banking system--that you will be shifting from central banker to super-banker--and the potential for conflict between your primary role, which is a monetary role, and this other role by which you would effectively leave the prudential part to OSFI but in all other respects would be supervising the financial system, particularly the federally regulated institutions.
The analogy that springs to mind, which is not original to me, is putting the ministry of the environment and a ministry of energy in the same department. The issues are not always the same and the policy responses are not always the same. In your enthusiasm, for instance, for quantitative easing, which seems to be putting money into the system to buy assets of varying degrees of toxicity, you actually increase the money supply and therefore the potential to increase inflation, when maybe the proper monetary or policy response would be to keep inflation within a band or under control. I appreciate that when you were talking to Mr. Mulcair you had something of a response to that, but you didn't respond to that issue as it relates to your apparent aspiration to take on a macro-prudential role in the financial system.