On the consulting side, CMHC provides expertise and advice on housing finance projects abroad, assisting countries in transition and emerging economies to develop their own housing finance systems and policies. Canada's system of mortgage insurance has made mortgages accessible to segments of the population that would otherwise not meet eligibility criteria even domestically, and we offer this possibility to our clients abroad, with the ultimate goal always being that of home ownership.

Recognizing the opportunities created by the globalization of trade and the pressures of worldwide housing demand, CMHC works with Canadian companies in the area of export promotion and international business development for housing products and services. Given the generally small size of Canadian housing exporters, CMHC also sponsors research to assist them in developing market entry strategies and promoting Canadian technologies. Export activities create new jobs both domestically and abroad, and provide additional employment opportunities through joint ventures and foreign direct investment. Canada has made many advances in housing technologies and energy efficiency, and the Government of Canada is supporting the promotion of high quality, high performance Canadian housing to a growing community of environmentally and quality conscious builders throughout the world.

As we strengthen our own institutional capacity, we are also increasing the visibility of CMHC internationally, positioning ourselves competitively in an increasingly global marketplace, and developing new revenue streams for the Canadian exporters and the Corporation.

This is a very challenging question. Our strategies are as follows: first, to encourage smaller cities and towns to develop in such a way that they become the main channels to attract rural population, and this in turn serves to reduce the influx of such population to the bigger and super urban cities; and second, to create job opportunities through rural economic developments so that these rural areas are well-prepared in the course of modernization. Further consideration will be given to the economic contribution of the influx of this rural population to the cities concerned by extending the social welfare scheme (including housing benefits) to those who are qualified.

The current infrastructure developments involve obtaining lands from rural areas and older part of the cities at below market price through administrative orders. The affected population generally is among the lower income groups. Since they are not compensated fully, it is fair to say that in some way they are subsidizing part of the infrastructure costs for the government.

可否請劉教授解釋中央政府對低收入人士(即未有能力購買商品房)住屋需求的政策及安排？

There are two main schemes. Firstly, the 'Affordable Decent Housing' scheme for the middle lower income groups. It is done through free land supply from the government, lowering development fees and construction costs, controlling the profit margin of developers and restraining sale prices to achieve lower flat prices. The other is the 'Public Rental Housing' scheme for the low-income families, which is done through rent subsidies or provision of cheap rental housing to meet the housing need of these families.

My answer is that the government is trying damn hard to get its people to produce more babies and at the same time attract foreign talent to sink root in Singapore. Demographics unlike economics are harder to control and manage.

With the exception of South-American Japanese, the government has not accepted unskilled laborers from overseas. However, it is currently considering offering permits since it anticipates that, due to the future decrease in population, particularly working population and an increase in those with higher education, there will be a shortage of unskilled laborers.

The government is also launching a series of new programs that aim at improving the conditions of childcare and at encouraging people to have children. For example, how the period of maternity leave, gender-equality and childcare facilities should be has been and is being examined.

I agree that such exhaust fans might well be associated with the problem, however only part of the problem. For a start the fans are not the root cause of infectious diseases such as SARS but may provide a place for it to incubate (because they are difficult to clean properly, or are not cleaned frequently enough) and help the problem to spread (because of our very high rise and high density living conditions, it is common for the exhaust of one fan to enter adjoining properties). Precautions then are to stop the SARS at source (e.g. in the drains), ensure that ventilation equipment is properly sterilised as necessary, and ensure that fan exhausts are properly located for effective dispersal.

In this respect, HK-BEAM encourages natural ventilation where possible and even advocates wind analysis / CFD to investigate the build up of stagnant air / heat (e.g. around air conditioners, etc). Optimise cross ventilation can also be used to investigate cross contamination from one flat to another.

HK-BEAM will continue to evolve to specifically address such hygienic issues. The HK-BEAM research team is actively working on development of assessment criteria at the moment.

Finally, through BEC's involvement in a recent study to investigate the hygienic conditions of an ageing public housing estate, we found that issues such as stack effects in unused lift shaft access points and refuge chutes could cause the potential spread of bacteria or virus. For these problems, mitigation measures such as sealing for air tightness (for unused access points) and the use of mechanical ventilation (for refuge chutes) could be applied.

Naturally, one good measure is to locate kitchen and bathroom exhausts in walls facing open external areas rather than re-entrant space. This arrangement allows effective dispersion of pollutants from bathroom and kitchen exhaust and avoids having the exhausts facing window opening of an adjacent flat in a re-entrant scenario.

Building design is always a balance of constraints. There will be situation where bathroom or kitchen exhaust facing re-entrant is unavoidable. In such case, various measures can be considered to enhance pollution dispersion:

a)	Avoid locating exhaust location directly facing windows of adjacent flats as far as practical.
b)	Enhance natural ventilation in re-entrant by adopting cross-ventilated re-entrant design.
c)	Limiting the size of exhaust fans installed by tenants through management arrangement or design measures like controlling the size of glass panels available for exhaust fan installation.
d)	Require tenants to install exhaust fans with device like louvers to divert the exhaust downward and avoid blowing into the adjacent flat.

Computer fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation are tool utilized in some of our projects to analyze the effectiveness of pollutant dispersion and identify problematic area of a proposed design at early design stage so that corresponding design improvements can be implemented.