Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, on behalf of the superintendent and the rest of my colleagues at OSFI, for the invitation to be here today. The health of the housing sector is important to the Canadian economy and to the health of Canada's financial sector, and we welcome the

Finance committee  What I would add is in relation to your comment about the nature of our regional markets. I would say that the policies that OSFI has introduced around residential mortgage lending are regionally neutral. A good loan is a good loan regardless of where it's written. It has appropr

Finance committee  It's not my understanding that the rules will preclude mortgage finance companies from doing renewals. What the rules do is they reprice portfolio insurance. That is how some of the mortgage finance companies fund their mortgages. For finance companies that don't have their own b

Finance committee  I think 80% of the mortgages originating in Canada end up on the balance sheets of banks under OSFI supervision, the larger banks. What Dominion Lending Centres is describing is the origination of mortgages. There's a difference between who originates a mortgage and who ultimatel

Finance committee  Thank you for your question, and I apologize that I must answer it in English. I'm actually not going to answer it, really, because I don't think I have appropriate data. I don't think that's a piece of information that our office would necessarily gather.

Finance committee  I imagine the banks would have it. If I understand your question, you're looking to determine the usage of RSP programs for down payments and whether they're being used for a primary residence or second houses. Is that right?

Finance committee  I think it's the banks that have to track that information. They would have it. It's not a question that's necessarily pertinent to our prudential mandate. I can ask at the office to see if it's data that we have, but I suspect not.

Finance committee  Do we pay close attention to that? Yes, absolutely. The letter that I mentioned in my opening remarks included comments on exactly that issue, reminding lenders that it's very important to be diligent about assessing a borrower's capacity to repay, and particularly where that cap

Finance committee  In my last job, I was in British Columbia. We were looking at this question in earnest a year or so ago. We determined that about the closest thing to a source of information that would give you this information is the real estate sector. They'll track through their contracts of

Finance committee  As I said in my opening remarks, each of us here today has a very distinct mandate and a role to play in the financial sector, but we work very closely. There are a number of committees, some of which are actually empowered in legislation, through which we share information. We a

Finance committee  Our role at OSFI is to give advice relative to our mandate, which is the protection of depositors and policy holders—the stability of banks, basically. We talked to the Department of Finance about a narrow slice of the many policy considerations that somebody in their chair needs

Finance committee  I think I can give a short answer. The underwriting requirements that most banks have in place look for the down payment not to be in the form of debt. If it isn't a form of debt, then that debt gets factored into the overall debt service ratio, and these are the measures that we

Finance committee  There has been a range of policies, so I guess it's difficult to talk about any one of these policies, but in general the things that OSFI has done and some of the recent things that changed the mortgage insurance market are actually not designed to target housing. They are desig

Finance committee  If there's a sudden sharp rise in interest rates, which I think is a genuine risk, whether you live in Kelowna or the greater Toronto or greater Vancouver region, the cost of your mortgage payment will go up because interest rate policies aren't regional. If you have entered that

Finance committee  I would come back to the first question this afternoon from Mr. Sorbara, about what we worry about. I'm a regulator. I get paid to worry. But my biggest worry is that we keep thinking the history is what will happen in the future, and we get complacent. We get asked that question