Finance committee  Yes, by all means. One of the things we did was to clarify the rules for the claiming of the capital gains exemption. This gets to be quite technical, so if you like I can provide it in writing.

Finance committee  In essence, it ensures that only those who are eligible for the exemption get to claim it. It furthermore ensures that reporting of sales of primary residences will from now on be made in all circumstances, whereas before it was only under the circumstance in which tax was owed.

Finance committee  I would not put it in those terms. I would say we understood that there would be some structural adjustments necessary in the marketplace as a result of the reduced availability of portfolio insurance to those firms that are dependent upon it to finance their businesses.

Finance committee  We knew there would be some adjustment in the marketplace over time.

Finance committee  If I may, I'll explain here that our changes have been made very much at the margin in terms of the access to the government's support for housing. In this respect, what we have done is change the rules for portfolio insurance that was used by these lenders to access funding. We

Finance committee  We reduced the access to the support by the taxpayer for those firms that were reliant upon it.

Finance committee  We anticipated that there would be some transitional issues associated with the adoption of these rules and that the marketplace would adjust over time. We would not predict an increase in mortgage rates, but we would say it would be, in the circumstances, possible that they woul

Finance committee  Again, looking at this from the broader perspective, it was a public policy decision to—

Finance committee  Yes, I'll get to your questions, if you don't mind.

Finance committee  Thank you. We were looking at it from this point of view: what is a right amount of support to provide, by the taxpayer, to the marketplace? In this case we were aligning the same profile of risk for the high- and the low-ratio mortgages.

Finance committee  Overall levels of non-performance in mortgages are low across Canada generally.

Finance committee  The risk here is that you have a situation wherein marketplaces and in markets where they're fuelled by low interest rates, you have a growth in the market and a provision of credit backed by the taxpayer, which leads people into situations of undue risk and ultimately threatens

Finance committee  I would not put it that way. I would say what we were doing was making the rules and the access for low-ratio to portfolio insurance the same as for high-ratio.

Finance committee  I can't comment on that at this point in time. I can, however, point to the fact that the national housing strategy, which is under way under Minister Duclos, is looking at support for forms of social and affordable housing. The consultations have taken place and the decision is

Finance committee  I can, by all means. We have now made six changes, six adjustments to the rules for mortgage insurance since the crisis in 2009. In all of those cases, the announcements were made without consultation, in a formal sense, with the marketplace. Having said that, I can assure you