Finance committee  Absolutely.

Finance committee  I think it will take at least a year or a year to 18 months. We have data from January already. I think you can get seasonal effects going on. Markets may be slowing down in any event. I think you want to have at least a full year, if not longer, to try to get a sense of what's h

Finance committee  That's a tough question to give a quick answer to. I suppose you could have a bifurcated market with various top-up and loan amounts that would be insured, as was the case 20 years ago.

Finance committee  If you're looking at debt stress, I think I'd have trouble saying that if you're putting the debt stress in, if you think that's the appropriate thing to do, segmenting out part of the country is not appropriate. Getting back to that previous answer, I think that maybe you should

Finance committee  I think it's going to be very tough. We have other independent sources of funding that are not available to our smaller competitors. I think it's going to be very tough. Certainly—

Finance committee  Yes, it's reducing choice. Certainly, the recent mortgage insurance changes are a revolutionary change in the Canadian mortgage landscape. It's something we haven't seen in 30 years.

Finance committee  Theirs would be a very similar message. This morning I reviewed their testimony from Monday night, and I think it's a similar message.

Finance committee  I'm not nearly as fussed about the stress test as maybe some of the people who have appeared. I think there's a lot to be said, in that if you're taking a mortgage out at 2.69%, you should be able to handle an increase in interest rates, maybe not 200 basis points but maybe 100 b

Finance committee  I would like to comment on the issue. I think there's this view that somehow the government is backing all the mortgage insurance, and I'll speak for the mortgage insurers. The two private mortgage insurers have capital to support their obligations to a double A level. This is co

Finance committee  I would say there were two changes. I think the biggest change wasn't particularly in the October regulations but in the changes announced by the Superintendent of Financial Institutions in mid-November increasing the mortgage insurance premiums on loan-to-values below 80%. We co

Finance committee  I find these changes came without any consultation, and they're eliminating the ability of the insurance for mortgage refinances. That's a big part of the business, so it structurally changes the lending industry from a model where Canadians have choice, to where they are further

Finance committee  Here are a couple of options. If they're concerned about too much liquidity in the marketplace, how about increasing the qualifying rate and the 70% of the market that is conventional mortgages below 80%. If you want to reduce liquidity in the marketplace, what about increasing t

Finance committee  The $300,000 average insured loan is not the loan in greater Vancouver or Toronto. It's the loan in Calgary, in Rimouski, in rural Ontario, in Ottawa-Gatineau. Those are not the places to put the stress test. The stress test should be put on big homes and the big amounts in the b

Finance committee  We were not specifically consulted on the changes in October. I would say, though, we have excellent dialogue with the Minister of the Department of Finance and we talk to him on a regular basis.

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for having invited me to testify before the committee this afternoon. I was born and raised in Ottawa, where my father worked as a public servant. It is always a pleasure to come back here. First National is a prime mortgage lender that underwri