Finance committee  Thank you very much. I appreciate it and I do appreciate your question.

Finance committee  The second point you mentioned was the Lacroix case, and I agree. I think the Quebec Supreme Court acted vigorously and I think the AMF did a great job on that. What concerns me is the provinces do have that jurisdiction to go after white collar crime. I would agree that with the federal model--and again we're talking about a national regulator, a little different--the provinces haven't grasped the mettle as much as they should have.

Finance committee  Mr. Mulcair made a very good point about the U.S., and the SEC probably should not be held up as the best example of regulators. They certainly had failures. But my sense is that the failures are not so much because it was national but more because it just didn't do the job it was supposed to do.

Finance committee  I'm happy to respond to that. You've covered quite a lot of ground and a lot of points, and I can appreciate where you're coming from. I'd like to parse your comments and deal with each one separately. The first one I'll deal with is your comment about Ottawa, because I'm the last person who would think that it should be set up here and run as a federal bureaucracy.

Finance committee  Yes, I'd be pleased to answer that question. I'll start by saying that regulatory regimes around the world are in the process of reform. We've talked a bit about that, and you're exploring that in the context of ratings. It's my view that for us to embark on vigorous comprehensive reforms of our capital markets—and I think we need to do that—moving toward a single regulator would certainly facilitate that.

Finance committee  —is I think a very important one, and it often gets missed in the debate. What we're finding in Canada, really, is an inability to implement policy quickly. We cannot implement the kinds of regulatory reforms we need fast enough. The cause, in my view, is a consensus-driven approach that we have now with a multi-jurisdictional system, and that is absolutely something that has to be solved going forward.

Finance committee  I'll take a run at the question. I think the debate over mark-to-market is one dealing with the pro-cyclicality of mark-to-market, which is the point you made. In up markets, you're marking up the assets, so you're encouraging a lot more activity in the financial sector and there's the potential of bubbles.

Finance committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Rajotte. Good morning to all committee members. Good morning. My name is Ian Russell. I appreciate this opportunity this morning to appear before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance to participate in your discussion on an assessment of the measures taken to enhance credit availability in the capital markets.

Finance committee  Yes, but they would have a balanced portfolio, which--

Finance committee  Well, there could be commissions earned on the transactions in the account completely analogous with either RRSPs or normal securities accounts. The point we were making was that we'd like to see a structure that didn't require a trustee relationship, because it isn't necessary and it would, in effect, reduce one element of cost.

Finance committee  But most middle-income Canadians would have that kind of a balanced account. So, yes, you're right--that would be the vast majority, I would think.

Finance committee  Well, it would be some of them through mutual fund investments, for example.

Finance committee  You'd go to a bank maybe.

Finance committee  Yes. What we're aiming at with those recommendations—and most of it is to synchronize it with the RRSP structures—is to reduce the administrative costs as much as possible.

Finance committee  Yes, it is pretty much similar to an RRSP.