Agriculture committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Agriculture committee  Once we have our discussions, we can share whatever thoughts we have. That wouldn't be a problem. But on the others, I think it's very much what an individual bank does in assessing the role of the product, the role of the program when it looks at risk, what its own succession p

Agriculture committee  Mr. Chairman, I don't want to suggest that we don't want to be cooperative on that, but we did not come here... I mean, we don't have an industry position that I could say to you right now, here's what we think of that particular program. We haven't done that. If I were to provid

Agriculture committee  To the extent that we do have concerns that we bring forward, I think we can share them, or if we have a position, we can share that.

Agriculture committee  I don't even know if we will have a position in the next two or three weeks. I'm simply saying that I was not prepared to answer that question right now. If we have something that we can share with you, we will do that.

Agriculture committee  Mr. Chairman, let me make a couple of opening observations. A number of those questions are very bank-specific. They need to be answered by an individual bank as opposed to the industry. On the question of assessing risk in AgriStability, every bank will look at that program a

Agriculture committee  The banking industry is a profit-making industry. We believe in free markets. We recognize, as some of the members have said, that agriculture is unique to some extent. There are many more government programs associated with it, and there are social issues associated with it. But

Agriculture committee  I think, Mr. Chairman, one way to answer that is to say that it's important for lenders to the sector to be prudent and to follow sound business practices. As I said, the banks have been recognized internationally for their risk management approach and their prudent lending. That

Agriculture committee  Mr. Chairman, I would say that more than 95% of the lending that the banks do is outside of government programs. It is done. Oh, yes, the—

Agriculture committee  We utilize the CALA, and CALA enables us to do lending that we would not otherwise do, because there is that guarantee. The HILLRP enables institutions to give restructuring loans that they might not otherwise have given. But as I indicated earlier, my members started doing tho

Agriculture committee  Yes, that's the total amount of lending.

Agriculture committee  It's the total amount to agriculture that is done without government loan guarantees or anything like that.

Agriculture committee  Let me make first an observation about the bank lending to the agricultural sector. I think I referred to it in my opening remarks, but we are the largest non-mortgage lenders to the sector. About two-thirds of our lending is for operating lines of credit of working capital. And

Agriculture committee  Do you want to address that to each banker?

Agriculture committee  We'll start with Bob.