Mr. Speaker, the Liberals confused Canadians yesterday when they said they were “moving forward with lowering interchange fees for small businesses”, because their so-called agreement with Visa and Mastercard is entirely voluntary, and still only reduces rates by 0.1%. Small businesses in Canada were expecting more and are calling the Liberal plan extremely underwhelming.
The NDP is calling for the government to cap merchant fees at 1% to help small businesses save up to $1 billion a year. Will the Liberals cap merchant fees at 1%, or will they continue to side with the big banks?