Thank you, Mr. Chairman and all colleagues. I'm going to share the time allotted to me with Mr. Garneau.
Mr. Taylor, I'll try to do this as best I can with a bit of a broken voice.
I think for most of us here there is great concern that we may come to the point where we can't unscramble scrambled eggs and in fact put these things back together. One concern that has been raised, Mr. Taylor, is of course the dominant position of Visa and MasterCard on the credit side, which of course you're inquiring on from two perspectives: the price maintenance and the abuse of dominance provision. However, I am concerned that as we have these discussions here as a committee, and as your bureau continues its work in terms of making a determination on the Visa front, the debit card market is already changing, and changing rapidly.
Point of sale terminals are now being transferred, with priority routing going to either Visa or MasterCard. Interac cannot find itself in a position, without a change in the consent order, to be able to have a semblance of opportunity to compete, considering, of course, the structure of its mandate--who operates Interac.
I'm wondering, Mr. Taylor, from your perspective, if speed, if getting to this issue a lot more quickly, is not a priority. How do you proceed? How will you be able to ensure that there will be sufficient competition if in fact most of the details that we see now are already in place? Merchants, of course, will have already signed contracts if there is no formal regulation to prevent them.