Finance committee  It's actually in the mortgage lending market. People may disagree with me, but let me give you an example. If you walk into a bank with a 25% down payment in cash, not borrowed, you're probably going to get the mortgage. Banks are in the risk management business. The more down payment, the less risk.

Finance committee  I don't have that figure at my fingertips. I've seen the figure, but....

Finance committee  Good question.

Finance committee  I haven't drilled down to that level yet, but there are proposals floating around in the States and in England. I can certainly get some ideas to you very quickly, but I don't have them with me.

Finance committee  I realize this is speculative. I don't have data, and I'm a very data-driven kind of person. But we have never tested this. I think you will see, if it was approved, that the acceptance companies would be working side by side with the banks. Some will go through the acceptance company: the Honda acceptance company, GMAC, and so forth.

Finance committee  In fact, I did that. It was called a floor plan or a dealer plan, where the bank would go in and finance the entire dealership on the business side. We would provide the loans to the business, because every car on that lot and every dealer in Canada is financed by a bank somewhere.

Finance committee  Yes, because the banks are prohibited from leasing directly.

Finance committee  It certainly is. I'm not saying it would solve their problems, but it would certainly alleviate their problems if some additional capital was provided to leasing by allowing the banks to come in. The acceptance companies can't because they're broke.

Finance committee  No, I would respectfully disagree with you. The Government of Canada had already taken on the risk the moment they insured the mortgage. All they've done is taken over the physical title to the mortgage, if you will. The bank has conveyed the mortgage. It is as if I sell my car to you.

Finance committee  That's an excellent question. It's been debated, of course, in the States as part of their examination of reregulation. Currently the U.S. is the only system where the central bank regulates the banks--inspects, audits, regulates the banks. The other major countries in the world do not.

Finance committee  And it didn't seem to work for them.

Finance committee  I was hoping, actually, that I wasn't going to be asked that question.

Finance committee  I didn't want people from different provinces to be shooting at me. We've learned in the last five, six, seven years--Volcker has said this, David Dodge has said this, others have said this--that all financial markets are interconnected. They are deeply interconnected because of the nature of financial markets.

Finance committee  I didn't mean to lay it all on the Congress. What I meant was, that was where it started because they are the referees. They have to set the regulatory framework. However, Fannie and Freddie then made some absolutely colossal errors. They are bankrupt; they were bought and nationalized.

Finance committee  I have seen a couple of very good estimates and they are wildly different. They're from two very respected people: Don Drummond, in a presentation he gave last week from TD Bank, estimates that they're about 10% away from the bottom. However, the analysis from Schilling in the States, who is a well-known mortgage and realty economist, estimates there's another 20% decline, so it's somewhere between a 10% and 20% decline.