Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. It's great to be here for this kickoff meeting and welcome the Minister of Finance.
Minister, I want to talk to you a little about stability in the housing market. That's a very important consideration for us here in Canada. I know that in New Brunswick we have a lot of forestry operations that cater to the housing market in both Canada and the U.S., from an export standpoint.
In division 11 of this, it talks a little about some of the changes in the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, and specifically about reforms around the governance and the oversight framework for CMHC. It's also important that there be increased oversight from the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, which will take a more active and formal role in monitoring the commercial activities of CMHC.
I got some pretty good feedback on that, including from Louis Gagnon of Queens University. He said that the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions is responsible for the oversight of insurance companies, so it only makes sense to bring CMHC under that purview, since they're a systematically important insurance entity.
Can you talk a little about this increased oversight and the importance of it for CMHC? I guess the second part of that question is: can you highlight some of the other actions we've taken to strengthen the housing market in Canada?