Well, I think the short answer is that both have helped. There have been four tightenings of mortgage insurance rules, which have been shortening amortization, raising qualifying interest rates, raising the minimum down payment, ending the ability to get mortgage insurance for a second home, and ending the ability to have mortgage insurance on a refinancing. Effectively all of those tightenings have been sensible. They've been paced so they didn't all come in at once and cause a sharp adjustment to the Canadian housing market. In our view, they've been timely and prudent. The oversight arrangements are welcome, and the continued quality of mortgage underwriting is absolutely essential to the long-term health of the market, and obviously to the fiscal position of the country as well, because ultimately there is a government backstop here.
The other thing I would highlight, which has been positive for the evolution of the market, is OSFI's introduction to mortgage underwriting guidelines and the tightening effect of those mortgage underwriting guidelines that came in last summer. That's been particularly relevant for home equity loans, or so-called HELOCs, and personal lines of credit, for which the underwriting standards were beginning to slip. OSFI acted in a timely way.
All of that has helped constructive evolution. If I may bring it back to monetary policy, we do see those measures, and we think that on the margin, the bank's tightening bias has reinforced or supported those measures, resulting in a slowdown in the pace of household growth and the start of a rotation of activity away from the housing sector to other sectors of the economy—and business investment is an important example. That should help contribute to a sustainable evolution of our growth. It also means that the prospect of tightening monetary policy is less imminent than we previously had anticipated .