Thank you, Chair.
Witnesses, it's a pleasure to have you here today. We, too, on this side, feel this is a very important study. We look forward to your further comments as we head towards, hopefully, some fairly palatable and constructive conclusions.
We have ridings across Canada where the service industry is in fact the most important industry as far as employment and growth are concerned. Your industries feature very prominently in that regard.
On any given day, someone who is an eternal optimist may open the paper and wonder what the effect of international tribulations and turbulence may be in terms of our own rosy picture at home, which has been good, at least I'd like to think, for the past 15 years now, gentlemen.
I'd like to ask this question. With Canada's exposure to sub-prime and the credit crunch down there, we are hearing from some in various institutions--insurance and banking, of course. So I guess this is to all witnesses who wish to respond to this. Is it fair to say that we in Canada have not been quite open or have not been able to fully comprehend the extent to which our institutions' exposures to investments made south of the border have come home to roost? What impacts do you believe this will have, in terms of the job picture, growth picture, in terms of the availability of credit for Canadians in the forthcoming six months or so?