Mr. Speaker, the hon. member explains that it the absence of government intervention in countries like the United States that permitted the financial crisis to occur.
In fact, the United States government was massively implicated in the U.S. banking system and in the mortgage market in particular. It was the American government that invented sub-prime mortgages, that encouraged banks to offer them, that provided regulations to force banks to provide them and then ultimately backstopped them through government sponsored enterprises called “Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac” which, combined, insured about $4 trillion worth of sub-prime lending.
The reason I mention that is that it is an important distinction from that fact, which is supported by the World Bank report on the question in 2010, and from what the member claims was the cause of the crisis. Does the member not acknowledge that one of the things Canada did right was to refrain from having its government implicate itself in the mortgage market and the lending business the way the U.S. government implicated itself?