I'm very familiar with the global financial crisis of 2007-2010. I happened to be working for a major Canadian bank in the United States at that time, so I had a front-row seat to those challenges.
In essence there are several big differences, obviously, between the two. The crisis of 2007-2010 was more a story of global financial economic disruption that affected the broader economy, whether it was housing or other industries. In this instance, it's almost the reverse.
In a typical recession you'd have months to a year to explore different policy alternatives and make moves to respond to changing economic conditions. In some instances now, we saw the change come abruptly, in some cases literally overnight, when revenues went to zero for certain businesses, so there are a lot of dramatic differences.
To respond to the core of your question, Canada is blessed not only in having the incredibly strong banking sector I spoke to during my opening remarks, but also because Canada is world-renowned when it comes to prudential regulations. Our prudential regulator in OSFI, Superintendent Jeremy Rudin is world-renowned for being one of the best prudential regulators in the world, and that kind of dialogue between major banks and OSFI to look at rapidly changing economic conditions and ensure the financial sector remains sound and stable has an eye to two things. There's an emergency need we're in the middle of right now, which is to provide immediate relief for people, but we also need to ensure that as we start to come out of this crisis, we have a strong, stable financial sector so that businesses can come back and businesses can grow once again.
Your point is a critical one, and I think it is a key issue that doesn't get talked about a lot: There's an immediate emergency need, but there's also a need to have a longer-term view as to how Canada is going to come out of this crisis.