Mr. Martin, let me finish. I'll answer your questions, and then I'm sure you'll have more questions for me.
As I indicated to Madame Bourgeois, the RFP that went out provided that we could hire up to two banks. The reason the deputy and I wanted to keep that as an option, Mr. Martin, is we knew the transaction would be north of $1.5 billion to $1.6 billion. It is very common in these types of transactions, Mr. Martin, for companies or governments to hire in more than one bank--very common.
The deputy minister had a committee--on which I did not, obviously, sit--that met all of the banks interested in working for the government and ranked them from one to.... I don't know how many showed up at this pitch. It was one to something. One was BMO, two was RBC, and I don't know who the others were.
We had kept the ability, we wanted to have that room, to have two banks, so we chose two banks, Mr. Marshall and I. This was not done in order to give RBC or BMO a leg-up. They had won the right to be one and two during the pitches they had done in front of this committee set up by the deputy, Mr. Martin.