Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I have no trouble believing that banks would make every effort to use the normal criteria when making political loans, in part because it's good business sense and in part because of course you face extra scrutiny when dealing with electoral events. Perhaps there's a certain unfair bias against your institutions that you would compensate for by being particularly strong in your attempts to be objective.
What worries me, however, is that the Canadian party system is extraordinarily volatile compared to, for example, our neighbours to the south, where red states are particularly red states and blue states are particularly blue. Ultimately, that's why we watch Ohio and Florida every single election.
Here we see dramatic changes and people coming out of nowhere. I just pulled out some examples of people who nobody thought would win, who wound up winning elections. A large number of NDP candidates in Quebec in the last election won, including two members of this committee, one of whom, Madame Turmel, had a long history as a prominent person. The other, Madame Latendresse, who was actually, in my view, one of the best performing members of Parliament when this Parliament was completely unknown, I think ran because nobody else was dumb enough to take the nomination in a riding nobody thought they could win—I think that's a fair assessment. And then she unexpectedly won.