Bill S-5 (Historical)

Financial System Review Act

An Act to amend the law governing financial institutions and to provide for related and consequential matters

This enactment amends a number of Acts governing financial institutions. It also amends legislation related to the regulation of financial institutions. Notable among the amendments are the following:
(a) amendments to the Bank Act, the Cooperative Credit Associations Act, the Insurance Companies Act and the Trust and Loan Companies Act aimed at reinforcing stability and fine-tuning the consumer-protection framework; and
(b) technical amendments to the Bank Act, the Cooperative Credit Associations Act, the Insurance Companies Act, the Trust and Loan Companies Act, the Bank of Canada Act, the Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation Act, the Canadian Payments Act, the Winding-up and Restructuring Act, the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions Act, the Payment Clearing and Settlement Act and the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada Act.

Financial System Review Act

[Jamie Nicholls, NDP, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to talk about the part of the bill that touches on foreign bank subsidiaries in Schedule 1. The changes mean that foreign banks will be subject to the same operating restrictions in Canada as other banks. This measure will eliminate tax evasion, one of our biggest problems.

Therefore, I ask the member what penalties will be imposed for tax evasion, for example, if someone transfers funds to a tax haven such as Switzerland or the Cayman Islands.

[Ryan Leef, Conservative, Yukon, YT]

Madam Speaker, I apologize to my hon. colleague, as I was trying to catch up with the translation. I think the question was: What are the penalties levied on foreign entities under this regulation if they are involved in tax evasion?

Although I do not know the specific penalties in terms of dollars and dimes, there is a host of legislation in our country allowing regulatory enforcement agencies to deal specifically with that. When investigations are conducted, the penalties imposed are going to be dependent on the investigation and the evidence presented of the violations that have come forward.

While we can talk about a range of penalties or maximums and minimums, we know that in any process the actual penalty meted out depends on the weight of the evidence provided by an investigation.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Madam Speaker, I asked the member who spoke previously a question about speculation in derivatives and other speculative instruments and why the bill does not deal with that. Could the member comment on that, please?

[Ryan Leef, Conservative, Yukon, YT]

Madam Speaker, as has been addressed a few times in the House today, when we get down into things that can be dealt with in a regulatory regime, that is where they belong.

We are looking at a high-level of fine-tuning of something that is working quite effectively. From the consultation process we have heard the adjustments that Canadians want to see made. We know from debate within this House and from what will come forward from committee that we are looking at things that are designed to deal with the fine-tuning of a very technical aspect.

I believe there will be other opportunities and occasions to deal with things that are probably outside the scope of this review and would be a better fit for the regulatory process.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Madam Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to enter this debate on this comprehensive and sweeping piece of legislation regarding our financial institutions, both their well-being and their duty and obligation to provide adequate service to Canadians.

I need to preface my remarks by noting that the bill is entitled Bill S-5, the S meaning that it does not originate in the House of Commons, the chamber of the duly elected representatives of the people. It has its origins in the other place, the Senate of Canada. As democrats, each and every one of us should take note, pause and reflect on the significance and meaning of the bill. More and more, we are finding bills originating in the Senate, when in fact all pieces of legislation should find their origins in the duly elected chamber of the House of Commons, not the unelected, undemocratic Senate. I profoundly resent this chamber being seized with a bill that has originated there. I will state that for the record.

The other thing comment I would say before discussing the substance of this legislation is the fact that once again we are faced with a debate on a bill with a gun to our heads, under pressure, under the time limitation placed on our democratic review, scrutiny, analysis, and due diligence of the bill, the very reason we were sent here as representatives of the people. We are being denied that right systematically once again by a government that introduces a closure motion almost on the same day it tables a piece of legislation. This is the 16th time in a row, in this short session of this 41st Parliament, that we are being denied our democratic right to give full study and examination of the bill and to have our comments within this place recorded in Hansard.

I do not want anyone in the country who has been observing the activities of our Canadian Parliament to think for one minute that these are normal circumstances. These are anything but normal. These are extraordinary. This is the most appalling abuse and undermining of the democratic process that anyone has ever seen.

I have been a member of Parliament for six terms. I have sat in majority and minority Liberal governments. I have sat in majority and minority Conservative governments. No one has ever seen anything like this before. This cannot be allowed to continue without condemning it in the strongest possible terms. I hope the people of Canada take note that the Conservative government of the day, and I do not say this lightly, is undermining the integrity of our parliamentary institutions by systematically denying the right of members of Parliament to study bills, per our constitutional parliamentary democracy. It offends the sensibilities of anyone who calls himself or herself a democrat to see this happening systematically.

While I am on the subject, I would also note that I just came from a committee meeting earlier today, where there has been a systematic denial of the public's right to know what its government is doing with its money, in its bills and policy development, by invoking the shroud of secrecy over the otherwise ordinary activities of parliamentary committees that have traditionally been held in public. The government has moved to put these in camera. For any ordinary Canadian watching, this means that the doors will be shut, everyone will be asked to leave, and there will be no cameras and no one will have any right to ever divulge what happened behind those closed doors. That is the in camera rule.

In times gone by, three or four years ago, it used to be the rare exception if the activities of a parliamentary committee were held in camera. It would be in matters of national security, or of profound commercial sensitivity where someone's right to privacy in a commercial setting would otherwise be violated.

Now in camera meetings are being used willy-nilly for any little issue that may be controversial or potentially embarrassing to the government. The government slams down the in-camera rule and shuts down the cameras, ironically. Everyone is kicked out of the room and no one in that meeting is ever allowed to divulge anything that happened behind those closed doors under the rule and penalty of the Speaker of the House of Commons. It is a very serious violation to contradict the in camera rule. There is no justification for this whatsoever. I cannot even divulge the matter we were discussing at today's in camera meeting, because it was in camera.

This has been a systematic undermining of the democratic procedures and the processes that have evolved over time to make our Westminster model of parliamentary democracy the best in the world. However, I caution the members across and anyone listening that our parliamentary democracy is a fragile construct. It exists only by virtue of both sides stipulating that they agree to abide by a set of rules that includes openness to the greatest possible, and respecting the role of the opposition to test the merits of the proposals put forward by the government before they are implemented into legislation.

Again, I caution the government of day. It may in fact be doing irreparable harm to our democratic institutions. I think that if it allows pendulum to swing too far this way, it will never get it back to the norm. The toothpaste might never go back into the tube; the genie might never go back into the bottle. The government has pushed the limits of the integrity of our system. It is like pulling a thread on a sweater: the whole sweater can unravel if we keep yanking on that thing. That is what the government is doing. It is testing not only our patience but also the integrity of our whole fragile, yet precious, parliamentary democracy.

I resent profoundly that we are facing closure once again on this bill for the 16th time since we returned to work after the parliamentary summer recess. It is an absurd situation that we find ourselves in. We are being systematically denied the ability to do our job as agents of the people who elected us here to provide scrutiny, oversight and due diligence and to hold the government to account. That is the very function of Parliament and it is what is being denied to us.

We are talking about banks. If there were any subject in the country that warranted a greater examination by the elected representatives of the people, it is the way banks are, or are not, serving the best interests of Canadians. It warrants enhanced scrutiny. It warrants not only a thorough examination but also a royal commission. The failure of banks to meet the needs of Canadians, and their gouging us in the process, is almost ridiculous. The biggest PR campaign in the country right now is not to sell cars, not to promote the oil sands, but the PR job of banks trying to peddle themselves to Canadians as warm, fuzzy and benign institutions that have our best interests at heart.

I challenge that. I would have welcomed the ability to challenge it in a much more thorough way as we go through the bill to amend the law governing the financial institutions of this country. I say this because in the riding of Winnipeg Centre, which I represent, chartered banks are closing like crazy. They are disappearing. They are going the way of the dodo bird. Whereas we used to have a bank, an accessible institution, on the street corner, they are all shutting down and are being merged into one conglomerate. There were 14 bank closures in my riding alone.

Do members know what is filling the void left behind? It is the fringe banking institutions, the Money Marts and payday loan outfits that are charging not the 60% that the usury laws of this country allow them to charge, but which should have been reviewed in this process, but 1,000% to 1,500%. The Government of Manitoba did an investigation and one example it found was a payday loan charging 10,000% interest.

Do members not think that warrants a bit of debate and analysis and scrutiny by the elected representatives of the people, the fact that people are being gouged because of the unwillingness of our chartered banks to live up to the terms and conditions of their charters to provide reasonable financial services to Canadians no matter where they live?

Because of their failure in that department, they have left a void that is being filled in by these predatory lenders. I do not know what can be done to make a 10,000% profit. Selling cocaine does not even give, I presume, a 10,000% profit. However, they are springing up like mushrooms all over the inner city and preying on poor people and gouging them in the most egregious way. The Parliament of Canada is silent on it because we are being denied the right to even do a thorough analysis of the job that financial institutions are doing to provide basic services.

We need to remind ourselves that we granted the chartered banks their charter and what comes with the charter is the exclusive monopoly for certain very lucrative financial transactions, the credit cards, cheque cashing and all of these things, that are enormously profitable. In exchange for the exclusive monopoly on these lucrative transactions, they were to provide at least the basics that financial consumers might need.

We in the NDP have been trying to rectify this for a decade or more, which is why these rare, once every five years, opportunities are so precious. Myself and the former leader of the NDP actually got some proxy shares and used to crash shareholder meetings of the big chartered banks. We would go to the Royal Bank shareholders meetings, as well as the Bank of Montreal, the Toronto Dominion Bank and the CIBC meetings. We would move motions at those shareholders meetings trying to bring these big institutions to account, to stop the gouging and to make them responsible.

Exactly. I see my colleague gets it. He seems as perturbed as I am about this situation.

I will give an example. This is quite an experience. Everybody here should do this. Members should go to a shareholders meeting of one of the chartered banks, such as the Royal Bank of Canada. My good friend, John Cleghorn, was the CEO of the Royal Bank. I had just enough proxy shares to move some motions. Nine motions were moved that year at the shareholders meeting of 1,500 people and I moved all nine of them. Everybody else just goes there to find out how much money they made. I went there to try to introduce some democratic reform to these appalling undemocratic organizations.

One of the motions I moved even my colleague from Nepean would enjoy. I moved a motion to limit the CEO's salary to 20 times that of the average employee. Now the average employee salary, if anyone did the math, is about $47,000 a year, and 20 times that is almost $1 million year, which is pretty good. Sadly, however, the motion was defeated.

Another motion, however, that we moved was for gender parity on the board of directors. This motion was what scared John Cleghorn. Matthew Barrett was not nearly as amused by all of this but John Cleghorn was a good sport. The motion for gender parity on the board of directors failed by this ratio, the exact same as the last Quebec referendum, 49.4% to 50.6%. We almost got it.

There is a lesson here. The shareholders' democratic movement should be inspired by this. A room of 1,500 people who did not come there to talk about amendments to democratic reform or corporate governance had an appetite for corporate governance. There was an interest.

Again, when we did the same thing with Matthew Barrett, he had a hissy fit and was openly wondering how Alexa McDonough ever got in there with any shares in his bank.

Other people are interested in this and, believe me, on behalf of those people who are being victimized by fringe banking in low income neighbourhoods like mine, we owe it to them to give a far more thorough analysis of our once in five year opportunity to amend the laws governing financial institutions and to provide for related and consequential manners. We should not be having it rammed down our throat by a bunch of unelected senators, hacks, flaks and bagmen in the Senate, many of them recently appointed by the government.

With all due respect for the Senate of Canada, it has no business introducing legislation for the House of Commons to have to deal with. It is supposed to be the other way around.

I have talked briefly about the importance of charter banks. I will talk at length, if given the opportunity, on the importance of charter banks and their obligation to provide basic financial services to ordinary Canadians. They have reneged on that deal systematically over the last many decades, to the point where they are now charging money at an ATM. First, they brought in ATMs, presumably to save money so they could lay off bank tellers. Finally, when they got people used to the idea that they had to use ATMs, they started introducing service fees. So they are not only saving a fortune and posting record profits every quarter, even through the economic downturn, but they are gouging ordinary Canadians for $1.50 each way to take $20 out of their bank account. I would like to see the percentage charge on that, extrapolated over the lending fees associated with the usury provisions. I think in the Criminal Code of Canada, if more than 60% is charged they are guilty of usury.

Therefore, how is it that the Money Marts, the payday lenders and the title loan lenders in my riding are charging 1,000%, 1,500% and, in this one egregious example, 10,000% interest and the government of the day and the enforcement agencies regarding financial institutions are silent on the matter? Clearly something is fundamentally wrong.

I have notes about Bill S-5 but many of the observations and points being made here are so narrow and specific that they miss the big picture. More often than not in this place we do not see the forest for the trees and the fact is that we are not being well served by our financial institutions. We are being gouged by our financial institutions. We should be screaming from the rooftops condemning the treatment of ordinary Canadians by the gouging that is going on.

I have talked about the shareholders' rights efforts that we used to make. We should probably mention that again but I want to talk about one other thing in the global picture of how we view the relationship we have with the financial institutions that seem to have such great influence over this country.

I hear time and time again the government side bragging that we have the best banking regime in the world, that it is due to the wizardry of our Minister of Finance and that somehow everything is rosy in this regard.

I want to remind anyone listening today that were it not for the Herculean efforts of the NDP, not five or seven years ago, the charter banks of Canada would have been allowed to merge into massive institutions, as they wanted to do. They were dying to merge. They were asking permission. They were knocking on the door. The John Manleys and the Paul Martins of the world were eager to receive the message. Do members know why they wanted to merge? It is because they wanted to play in the big leagues in the biggest game in town. The biggest game in town at that time was the sub-prime mortgage industry. Our banks were too small to play a meaningful, realistic role in that industry sector but they were dying to merge so they could dive in there and we would have been in just as much trouble as the big institutions in the United States, crashing and burning in this catastrophic notion of bundling the sub-prime mortgages and marketing them as a financial product.

Fortunately, we managed to prevail and block the urge to merge. I remember the national campaign was purge the urge to merge. It was Lorne Nystrom's campaign, the NDP finance critic of the day, criss-crossing the country. I see he is outside here today. We should recognize and pay tribute to Lorne Nystrom because we owe him a great debt of gratitude. He is a big businessman and he knows something of these things.

It is our job and our obligation to ensure the financial institutions meet the needs of Canadians, not to have it rammed down our throat in a bill put forward by the undemocratic, unelected Senate.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Transport]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to learn that my hon. friend is a believer in shareholders' rights. Shareholders across Canada are our next door neighbours, our moms and dads, and our pension funds. In fact, one of the biggest shareholders of all is the Canada pension plan or the Canada Post pension plan. Blue collar workers, many of them unionized, are shareholders. They can only be paid a return on their shareholding investment on after tax corporate profits. There is literally no other way that a shareholder can get a dividend than for a company to pay that dividend out of the after tax profits.

The member and his party want to raise taxes on those profits, leaving less for the dividend receiving shareholder, meaning that all of the people for whom he purports to fight on behalf of would have less of a return, our pension funds would be less funded and the people who invest in companies to create jobs in the initial stage would receive a smaller return.

As a shareholders' rights advocate, I am curious how the member can advocate raising taxes on those same shareholders.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Madam Speaker, as a former trustee of employee benefit plans, I concur that employee benefit funds and union pension plans are one of the largest single investors out there. In fact, over 50% of all of the trading that goes on at the New York Stock Exchange, and, in fact, the TSX, are employee benefit plans and union pension funds being moved around; the buying, selling and representing the beneficiaries of those plans.

One of the biggest things that has backfired in the Conservatives' zeal to keep lowering corporate taxes is that it has become obvious that businesses and corporations that are the beneficiaries of these lower taxes, such as the banks and the oil companies, are not reinvesting the money and are not paying it out as dividends to their shareholders. They are hoarding the money and stockpiling it. It is like Scrooge McDuck rolling around in his bank vault with all of his coins and dollar bills. They seem to be basking in all this dough.

The logic has not really played out. I understand their reasoning that if we allow businesses to make more profits they will reinvest and create more jobs. However, they have not been doing that. Their own analysts have been telling them that. The minister himself has expressed his frustration. They are not putting that money into circulation. It is not having the desired effect and, therefore, is a bit convoluted. It is Conservative pretzel logic that keeps this blind fundamentalist orthodoxy that lower taxes will trickle down to the average consumer. If anything, the companies that need help are not getting it because they are not paying taxes anyway if they are in dire straits.

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Madam Speaker, I always appreciate the interventions by my colleague from Winnipeg. I also appreciate the history lesson. I do not disagree with the fact that maybe John Manley and Paul Martin were leaning toward a merger at the time. That had been discussed. I know we had an admission from my colleague, a former economist himself and a supporter of deregulation at the time, who saw the light.

However, I thought maybe Jean Chrétien and the 161 Liberals who were in the House at the time had something to do with that. I did not realize that the NDP had punched so far over its weight with the 19 members that it had, so I appreciate the history lesson from my colleague.

After the current government took power, it came forward with two changes, one being the extension of mortgages to 40 years and the other being the zero down payment, both of which led to the devastation of the banking industry in the United States. This was the road that the government began to take this country down.

With the implosion of the economy in the United States, does the member believe that maybe this was the first indicator? Those guys were sort of bailed out by the implosion that took place south of the border and perhaps, with further endeavours by the government, we would be in a similar situation as the United States now had the time period they had at the controls been a little bit longer. I ask my colleague for his comments on that.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Madam Speaker, as I understand the question of the member for Cape Breton—Canso, I, too, remember the early days of 2008 when the current Minister of Finance was in complete denial that there were any clouds on the horizon. In fact, he was predicting surplus budgets. It was such a head-in-the-sand attitude that it led the opposition parties to come together and form the coalition that almost led to the defeat of that government. It was an irresponsible, reckless attitude.

It is galling to me to hear the endless praise heaped on the Minister of Finance. I do not recognize him as any kind of sorcerer. If anything, I see him as a road-weary magician pulling sedated bunnies out of a tattered top hat and thinking that he is impressing Canadians, when he is not.

[Jamie Nicholls, NDP, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Madam Speaker, the House leader earlier today said that this bill had to be passed before April. I seem to remember at the beginning of the session that the first priority of the Prime Minister was to appoint his buddies to the Senate: Fabian Manning, Josée Verner and Larry Smith. Rather than telling the Senate that we needed to pass this important banking legislation, he was putting his buddies into the Senate.

How long does he wait until he finally lights up and says this is important? It was November when he said that we needed to get this through the House. There are important things in this legislation that we have to look at, like tax evasion. Our country loses millions, maybe billions, per year by people who put their money in offshore paradis fiscaux, as we say in French. They are places where people can evade their taxes. This bill starts to address these things, but we have more questions, such as what the enforcement will be like.

We can see that the priority of the government was to put its buddies in places of importance rather than pass important legislation. Now we are stuck with not being allowed to debate. There are 300 ridings in the country. Each MP was elected to speak for his or her constituents. Unfortunately, due to the lack of planning of the government, we are not able to do so.

Would my hon. colleague elaborate on this point?

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for raising an important aspect of our financial institutions review that will not get the attention it deserves. That is something chartered accountants call tax-motivated expatriation. New Democrats call it a sleazy, tax-cheating loophole when people can put their money offshore so it is out of reach of the taxman. The former prime minister, unfortunately, was the undisputed champion of this when he closed down 11 tax havens with which we had tax treaties. He left one significant one, where the prime minister of the day happened to have 13 shell companies.

There has been an appalling lack of due diligence. We leave money on the table that should rightfully be paid in taxes. It is estimated that as much as $7 billion a year slip through the fingers of Revenue Canada due to these tax-motivated expatriations. Plugging these loopholes should be the simplest first thing that any minister of finance would do when trying to balance the budget. Yet when New Democrats introduced a bill to that effect, we were not allowed to introduce it in the House because, apparently, it would have the effect of increasing a person's taxes. Plugging a tax loophole Conservatives equates to increasing a tax and the bill was thrown out as being deemed non-votable for that reason.

There is a lot of work to do and we are not going to get it done because Conservatives keep ramming through legislation using closure. It is undemocratic and wrong. We should condemn them in the strongest possible terms.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs]

Madam Speaker, it is a great pleasure for me to speak to this bill, especially after my friend for Winnipeg Centre has just given an empty lecture. He is very well known for his flowery words. I was quite pleased to hear my friend from Cape Breton join him in trying to praise what they had been doing. However, if we really look at what has happened, it is no wonder they are a smaller party than before because those members were totally out of touch with Canadians. That is why they find themselves in that corner.

I will correct what the member for Winnipeg Centre has said. He has been using his flowery words and theatrics to say that the bill has come from the Senate and that it is not needed. He forgets why we are debating the bill. To be clear, it is because of the regulations and financial safeguards that the government introduced for the country's financial institutions that have allow them not to be affected as other global institutions have been. It was because of strong regulations.

We have a bill that looks at financial institutions. This bill is a common sense thing. That is what I want to say for the member for Winnipeg Centre who was debating the bill and talking about shareholders.

I will be sharing my time, Madam Speaker, with my colleague for Calgary Northeast

It is natural when we have an act that contains dynamic factors toward financial institutions, that we have a sunset clause so we can come back and review what has happened. Therefore, we would have the best institutions and be able to change to meet the demands of the day.

The previous member talked about being a shareholder. He should be doing very well if he is one. He wants to make money from his investments. Talking about making money and investing by the anti-trade and anti-business party called the NDP, Lorne Nystrom was a strong financial critic. I was in the opposition when he was here. Today he is a big businessman. I met him outside in the corridor and he is doing trade. By the way, we heard all about trade with China. Members can talk to him.

There was talk about going to Shanghai, doing business with China and profiting. This is something I would think should be alien to NDP members. However, when it is time to make money, those members are right there. As the member said, he went to a shareholder meeting of a bank. Then he stands in the House and calls them gougers and all kinds of names. He is as shameless as anyone else when it comes to making money. That he is a shareholder of a bank is even more surprising.

Coming back to the act, after every five years, it has to be reviewed. It has a five-year sunset clause. We can then put the latest changes and address what is happening in the economy for the benefit of Canadians.

I was listening to a member from Winnipeg talk about ATM fees. The ATMs are used by thousands and thousands of Canadians because it is a wise, cheap and convenient alternative to going to the bank tellers. That is why it is so popular. The member did not recognize that.

Coming back to this fact that this has been brought forward, it is because we are now coming to the end of the five year sunset clause. That is why we are debating it in the House. Whether it comes from the Senate or wherever it comes from, it is necessary and it is required by law for us to debate the bill. If we do not debate the bill and review the sunset clause, then the act would die and we would be unable to address the changes in the financial institutions. It is a requirement by law.

That is what we are talking about it, not about the NDP members crying about the Senate and everything else. Their argument is to abolish the Senate. It is a very great argument. I just love their argument. Why is there argument is wrong? Because they know under the Constitution it is not possible to do it. They know that very well. What is so great about a proposal which we know will never pass? That is the NDP, giving a proposal which will never pass.

If we look at other countries, Canada stands as a beacon of financial stability during the recession. We have heard about sub-prime mortgages and what has happened to the banks in America and in the European Union.

All the banks had to be saved, even the German banks, British banks and American banks. Did anything happen to the Canadian banks? No. Why? Not because of the party and not because it took credit, it is because we had sound financial regulations under which the Canadian banks worked. However, as things change, we want Canadian banks to going out and showing the Canadian strength, not what the member opposite calls about gouging and all these things.

If the Canadian banks are making profit in the world market, as the NDP's former finance critic is trying to do now with a business arrangement with China, what is wrong with that? As long as the Canadian banks are making money, they are paying their taxes and at the same time they are employing Canadians. That is a plus for Canada. There are jobs for Canadian. The NDP should understand that corporations make this happen.

We just heard from a member who talked about the teachers' pension plan and investments. Does the member think the teachers' pension plan will invest in a company that is losing? Absolutely not. How many pension plans of unions are invested in the banks, strong banks. We do not want weak banks in which to invest. Therefore, it is important that these financial institutions be accommodated.

The Liberal member mentioned 2008. The Liberals have their heads in the sand. In 2008 there was a recession. Did he not hear about the G20? It is a collective effort by the G20, which agreed to do the stimulus package so the world would not go into recession and that there would be jobs. Any time this government has presented anything, the opposition parties have opposed it. That is why the Liberal Party sitting at the corner.

At the end of the day, what happened? The Canadian economy withstood those shocks because of the sound financial input of this government.

The reduction of the GST, which was promised by the Liberals and has now been fulfilled by this government, gave extra money to companies to get across to consumers to spend money so the economy would move on, something the NDP members should learn and move on from the anti-trade and anti-business agenda so they can move forward.

We have an example with the 2008 recession. Where is Canada today, as it has been said by the Minister of Finance? I am really glad my friend from Winnipeg does not like the finance minister. If he did, I would be worried for the economy of Canada. It is his kind of business idea, so I am glad he made it very clear that he does not like the finance minister.

The Minister of Finance said that this government, since coming into power, and for my friend from Cape Breton—Canso, has created 600,000 full-time jobs for Canadians. Under your government, it would probably have been cutting transfers—

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

Order. The hon. member's time for debate has expired. I would remind him to address his comments to the Chair and not to members directly.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Madam Speaker, that was a rather surreal speech by the parliamentary secretary. I would like to return to some real facts that do matter to Canadians.

This is about fairness. That is the balance the Conservatives are missing with regard to their approach to the banking sector. We have seen an incredible increase in bonuses and salaries to CEOs of banking institutions. In 2009, the CEOs of the top five banks received salaries and bonuses of $8.3 billion. This is where Canadians are onside and understand there has to be a redirection of that balance.

I would ask the parliamentary secretary to address the issue of CEO compensation of $8.3 billion. In 2009, the bonuses increased by record amounts. How does that justify the increasing fees Canadians have to pay for services?

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

Madam Speaker, precisely what I want to tell everyone is the difference between that party and this party. Those members would like to interfere with the running of private corporations and put their own stamp on them.

Private corporations are accountable. The member should understand how a private corporation is run. As the member's friend from Winnipeg said, the CEOs are accountable to the shareholders as to how much compensation they receive. They are not accountable to the NDP. The shareholders put money into the banks. The NDP did not put any money into the banks. The shareholders are the owners of the banks. They will decide the amount of compensation for the CEOs.