Status of Women committee  You are referring to private pension plans. At the federal level, we are responsible for regulating federal pension plans, which represent about 7% of all plans. As Mr. Forbes mentioned a little earlier, in October the minister unveiled proposed changes to the pension plan syst

Finance committee  I'm Jeremy Rudin, assistant deputy minister, financial sector policy.

Finance committee  Thank you. That's very helpful for me to better understand. The government, as I said, is monitoring the situation very carefully and has taken action in a number of areas. In the budget bill that's before you, the government has sought additional powers in order to be able to d

Finance committee  I would say that I would provide a different summary from that.

Finance committee  The government does considerable contingency planning. I was about to discuss what the government is doing on the pension side, but apparently I won't have time. It stands ready to do quite a bit more if necessary.

Finance committee  It was a statement, not a question, but it's certainly not--

Finance committee  I would like to clarify a point before beginning. Rating agencies are not regulated by the federal government. Mr. Chair, we must make a distinction between ABCP that is issued by banks, and ABCP that is issued by other institutions. Non-bank ABCP was the source of the problems

Finance committee  I'm sorry, is it the exposure to taxpayers?

Finance committee  I think you're asking me what the government's contingency plans are for additional facilities.

Finance committee  We look at what's going on in credit markets all the time. We certainly do consider various options. Right now I think we're preoccupied with rolling out what was in the budget. We do consider what other possible areas of intervention there would be, and the government has stated

Finance committee  I'm sorry, that prices are...?

Finance committee  I wish I understood the question.

Finance committee  I'm not sure how profits relative to expectations are relevant here. Bank profits are not rising; the banks have done better than analysts were expecting them to. This improvement in expectations may well be because bank credit losses were lower than expected. I would have to loo

Finance committee  I'll go briefly over some of the facilities. The insured mortgage purchase program is one that, as we discussed, purchases mortgages from lenders, which then gives them funds that they can on-lend. I think we see the evidence of that in rates in a couple of ways. First of all, fi

Finance committee  As I was saying to Mr. Laforest, the government's position in favour of the common securities regulator, as he pointed out, predates the financial crisis. The financial crisis certainly adds some impetus to this, in the government's view. Among the other advantages of the common