Finance committee  I don't have that information, but perhaps my colleagues do. It's still a relatively small part of the market.

Finance committee  I have a couple of observations, Mr. Maloway. First of all, again, we have to be really, really careful not to conflate what's happening south of the border with what's happening in Canada. I do think that south of the border we saw a lot of underwriting problems and loose prac

Finance committee  Well, I think it's fair to say that banks certainly don't want to put somebody into a house where they have to foreclose. You don't want to hold those mortgages. I think what has happened is that the standards haven't changed; what has changed across the board is the level of ri

Finance committee  The only thing I would say in addition—and this is really enforcing the point that Nancy has made—is that the banks will make their credit decisions on a case-by-case basis. They will look at your balance sheet, who your suppliers are, what the deals are, the level of debt you ha

Finance committee  It's exactly as Nancy said. We're in an environment here where you have, right across the board, increased risk. And you have to price risk accordingly. If you didn't price risk accordingly, there'd be less credit available. Re-pricing means you can actually continue to lend. No

Finance committee  What I'd say there, Mr. McKay, is that I think Canadian banks are very well viewed around the world, and we're seeing all sorts of increasingly good commentary about our system here. The challenge, though, is that the marketplace simply isn't functioning as well as it should. We

Industry committee  Absolutely.

Industry committee  Nancy is absolutely right. We really are a high-tech sector. Comment was made earlier about our partnerships with universities, and a lot of that is directed toward the research angle, particularly in the technology area.

Industry committee  As Nancy was saying earlier, we're seeing the banks report this week and next. There is an impact of the slowdown, but in terms of the specific issue in the United States that has caused a problem, sub-prime mortgages and so on, most of our members have been fairly clear that the

Industry committee  I think Nancy is absolutely correct. Overall, Canada has a very strong economy, and job growth is very strong. Of course, you do see sectors in which there is pressure. But what we try to do, on a case-by-case basis, with individual clients and certainly with business clients, is

Industry committee  Pardon me, but I have to speak in English.

Industry committee  This is a very good question. It is a question a lot of people have studied. The industry has studied it. We've looked at it. We've commissioned studies. There have been other parliamentary reviews. I think one of the issues, first of all, is that banks do provide short-term cr

Industry committee  This is part of the conundrum I was talking about earlier. Often you will find a payday loan institution very close to a bank branch. It's exactly as you say; it's not because of abandonment. If you look at the practices of payday lenders, they require you to have a bank account,

Industry committee  That's a very good question, and it is something we have been watching over the last few years, I think for the same reasons and from the same motivations as you and the United Way. You talk about a regulatory gap. The federal government, a few years ago, passed a statute that i

Industry committee  It was earlier this year. Indeed. Up to that point they had not been regulated. It allowed the provinces to do two things: set the fees—because as you point out, there are a lot of concerns there—but also to regulate market conduct in consumer protection issues. There are worrie