Mr. Kevin Johnson:

To add to this, it is great the Senator has raised the issue. There has been an unfortunate alignment of CUAC's recommendation on increasing the cap and microcredit loans. This link is not in the report. It was not done for this purpose alone. As Mr. Corr mentioned, the reason the recommendation was made and we as a group supported it was because it would put the boards of the credit unions in control. If we go back to the Credit Union Act that sets out the objectives of the credit union, section 6(2)(b) states one of them is to charge a fair and reasonable rate. The context is that we could open more credit facilities to more people if we recoup some of the administration costs. Obviously, there is the issue of the wider prudential management of the credit union whereby, as Mr. Farrell mentioned, we could have interest rates shocks such as we saw in the 1990s. It is to provide flexibility for the boards to have control over it. We have the existing cap and, as Mr. Corr said, we are the only lenders to have such a thing. It is not a target and, at present, the average rate is only two thirds of the limit. It does not suggest rates will increase. This is why it is great to have an opportunity to clarify this. It is just to provide flexibility to the board of each credit union so it could manage a situation as it thought fit.