Thanks, Mr. Chair.
I appreciate your being here and giving us your update today.
I want to touch on one of the items you mentioned in your opening comments in regard to consumer debt. You mentioned specifically the B-20 mortgage guidelines. I want to touch on those a little bit. You mentioned a couple of things. You felt it had some impact on consumer debt, but you also indicated that it had some impact on housing prices in some markets. I want to touch on both of those items a little bit further.
First, in terms of the consumer debt itself, have you looked at or studied or factored in the idea of consumer debt as a whole? In other words, you're saying that you're seeing some impact on people in terms of the mortgages. Obviously, we've heard anecdotally that maybe as much as 20% of buyers are finding it more difficult, maybe even impossible, to get into the market. Obviously, when we're talking about people getting CMHC-insured mortgages, that is something people can understand, but when we're talking about people who are putting that 20% down payment or more, and are therefore not having the mortgage insurance, are we then instead, by having the stress test....?
Have you done any studies on whether what's happening is that instead of a mortgage, they're just taking on other types of debt, maybe buying a car or whatever? Instead of actually reducing the amount of debt, are we just changing it to a different type of debt? When you're talking about a car or something like that, it's certainly not, in most cases, as good an investment as a home, for example.
I'm just curious to know whether you have looked at that and whether there's just been a shift in the type of debt rather than a complete lowering of it.