Mr. Alan Merriman:

Then they became 35-year mortgages. Why was that done? It was done, in part, because demand; people wanted to be able to access greater funding so they could get their houses. And it was accommodated because there was a rationale too, "Well, if you're 20 years of age, why shouldn't you be able to borrow for 35 years?" It clearly ended up, at a macro level, being bad because all it did was inflate house prices etc., etc., but they're the type of changes that were accommodated during that period.