Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you to all our witnesses. It's great to have you here.
It's been a very interesting study so far. I think that to see where we want to go it is important to look back at where we've been. I know Mr. Rafferty on the NDP side wanted to paint a little bit of a picture for the record, and talk about some of the numbers, and then imply, clearly, that somehow when the Conservative Party formed the government the bottom just magically fell out of the barrel. He completely forgets the fact that between 2006 and 2011 there was a minority government in which everybody was working together, and the NDP would have to have some hand in any of that equally if they were going to play that kind of game.
It might be interesting to move away from the direct partisan games they're attempting to play here, and refresh us again on what's going on in the market. What was going on at the time? What have been the real challenges in 2005, 2006, up to the 2008 crisis that occurred? Then we can start to really look at how we avoid those similar things as we move into the future.
I think that is the ultimate objective of the committee study now, to identify clearly what went on, and if there was a hand that government played, then we need to expose that and know that so we can avoid it. If that's not the case, I think we need to skirt aside what's more than typical from the NDP side here, focusing on partisan attacks.
If you could comment on that, it would be great to hear.