Mr. Chair, I want to thank the honourable member for his question. If he does not mind, it would be easier for me to answer in English.
The member is quite right. EDC is set up as a corporation, so we are intended to be self-funding. EDC has in fact been profitable in every one of its 61 years of operation. More recently, EDC has actually had a more significant profit. Last year it was some $1.2 billion, roughly equal to the same profit we reached in 2004. We expect a profit level somewhat comparable to that this year.
Basically, in size, EDC has a little over a thousand permanent employees, about 90% of whom are based here in Ottawa. The balance of them are spread through regional offices across the country, along with ten representatives that we have outside of the country in specific markets, such as emerging markets where Canadian activity is very important and building.
The corporation runs a series of insurance products and services, as well as financial services or lending services. It's actually the lending that generates the principal revenues of EDC. Insurance contributes to that, but it's about a 90% contribution from the lending side of the business in terms of general revenues, and about 10% comes from a variety of insurance products.
Out of those revenues, EDC not only pays its administrative expenses but sets aside all of the provisions for future operations. It sets aside a loan provision and it sets aside a claim provision, in order that in the event that we have loan losses or something against the insurance claims—which is part of the business—we draw that out of the claims and we do not have to go back to the shareholders for any equity.
The government has a paid-in equity position of just slightly less than a billion dollars. The cumulative equity now, if you take the equity paid in, retained earnings, and then you take the provisions that exist, is in excess of $8 billion against a total asset base of about $20 billion. Now, that $20 billion is basically the loan assets, and over and above that $20 billion, we have contingent liabilities that relate to all of our insurance operations. Last year those totalled about $55 billion in insurance and about $10 billion in new financing underwritten.