Finance committee  Thank you, John. Good afternoon, members of the committee. We will now turn to the third point in the motion: the range of BDC's services and the nature of its relationship with private sector financial institutions. Our 1,700 employees work from 94 offices across the country,

Finance committee  We don't feel that is an exposure, for two reasons. One, I believe everyone is comfortable with the solidity of the bank-backed asset-based commercial paper. Second, we're down to $85 million, and within seven days we'll be down to zero. We feel quite comfortable with our present

Finance committee  Yes. We have no non-bank asset-backed commercial paper.

Finance committee  We probably saw a slight increase in some files last fall that we might not have seen otherwise. Our lending practices have basically not changed. Obviously we're quite careful in terms of the way we lend. There have not been major changes, though probably we have seen a few more

Finance committee  Quite candidly, no. There are the usual sectors you would know would be under some level of difficulty—the tourism sector and the manufacturing sector are under some difficulty—so clearly those sectors are under some pressure.

Finance committee  We do.

Finance committee  I'd hate to comment on whether or not we get a lot more because of the asset-backed commercial paper, but the way we work--and it's been the same for a long time--is we price for risk on a project-by-project basis, so we will evaluate each project one-on-one and we will price it

Finance committee  I don't think we've noticed something that would be as dramatic as what you've just said.

Finance committee  As I said at the end of my presentation, the delinquency rates or level of impaired loans in our portfolio have not deteriorated thus far. That is the good news, it is even very very good news. It really is better than we would have expected. Here is what happens. We examine eac

Finance committee  We complement other financial institutions, and from where we stand there's really been no change. We have clients coming our way who in recent months may have come because other institutions were somewhat more risk averse, but there's no pattern.

Finance committee  That's correct.

Finance committee  Around 35% of our portfolio is in the manufacturing sector and around 12% is in tourism. Obviously, these are sectors that are under pressure at the moment. However, as I said earlier, delinquency rates have not deteriorated. By that I mean that the number of clients who are not

Finance committee  We are very pleased. We have congratulated our treasurer.

Finance committee  I would have to look at the statistics for each region in order to give you an exact answer. I know that the main regions facing difficulties are, broadly speaking, the Atlantic regions, rural Quebec and Southern Ontario, that is to say the Windsor region, while western Canada is

Finance committee  What concerns us is the state of the Canadian economy. Yes, the commercial paper situation is a factor, but there is also the issue of the U.S. market as a whole. Will the demand for Canadian products remain stable? There are a number of economic concerns. I do not think that we