Industry committee  We believe that we need to look at things like surcharging. I agree, most of our members are not going to want to surcharge, and I understand that. The point behind the idea of allowing the surcharging is that it gives power back into their hands. We know in other international examples around the world that, where they have allowed surcharging, small businesses rarely use it, but it gives the power back to the merchant to at least push back a little on the credit card companies, in terms of what they're doing.

Industry committee  It includes the banks, the credit card companies. I believe the Consumers' Association of Canada, and the Retail Council of Canada are part of it as well. I don't think it's all the banks. I don't sit on it, but our president, Dan Kelly, does. I believe that's the mix. It's a mix of credit card companies, banks, and the retailers, being the Retail Council of Canada and us.

Industry committee  It probably started about the beginning of this year or late last year. They are meeting every two to three months. They have a meeting this week.

Industry committee  It's not an easy balance. The credit card industry in Canada is dominated by two or three, and maybe now four, players, given the entry of Discover into Canada. Given that they have such a dominance in that particular market, we believe there needs to be a little bit of oversight in terms of how they operate in conjunction with the merchant side of the community.

Industry committee  The data you just quoted came from one of our surveys, where we do know that 80% of our members are still using cheques for business-to-business transactions. That's really where the biggest hurdle is: it's these business-to-business types of payments. For business-to-consumer transactions, there are the credit card and debit card types of systems out there, but it's the business-to-business side of things that we don't really have an effective electronic payment system for that is affordable and secure and accessible to smaller companies.

Industry committee  We always knew when the code of conduct was introduced in 2010 that it would be a document that needed to be updated constantly. We do think it's in need of updating today, including adding some provisions around mobile payments, on which there have been some good consultations done and some good ideas, but we have yet to hear when that's going to be added to the code of conduct.

Industry committee  To have a balanced budget?

Industry committee  That is very important to our members. It's among one of the top two or three most important issues for our members, that governments at all levels look to find ways to bring budgets back into balance as soon as possible.

Industry committee  Yes. If you look at slide 10 of the deck I gave you, where we look at the obstacles to accepting electronic payments, the fourth one, at 26%, says “concerned with online security”. We delved into this further. It's related to the fear that they become liable, of course, should there be customer information and so forth that gets stolen or is somehow not properly handled.

Industry committee  It really depends, obviously, on the rates they are able to negotiate, but in addition to that, of course, is the cost of setting up the systems. No, I don't have any exact numbers of what that could look like, but certainly we know when premium cards were introduced into the marketplace in 2008, most of the calls—and we had hundreds of them coming in—were telling us that their costs had increased by 25% to 30% overnight, within one month.

Industry committee  As I said earlier, I think there are different ways. We can perhaps encourage new technologies to move into those areas—I'm not an expert in this area either—such as satellite technologies and wireless technologies that could perhaps bring some competitive options into those more rural areas.

Industry committee  The cost of accepting credit cards has been going up, and just went up again on April 1. These are definitely barriers for small firms to adopt. The advent of mobile payments in the Canadian marketplaces worries a lot of small business owners because the last time we saw a new product enter the Canadian marketplace was when premium cards were introduced.

Industry committee  It's harder and harder to differentiate. You're absolutely right, as the vast majority of our members want to serve their local markets and that's where they're happy. It may be a service business too, so it's really just about interaction with people. They really just want to be able to use the website to make sure people understand what their services are and how to contact them.

Industry committee  On the wireless side, we didn't include questions on the wireless Internet in the survey that we did. We did ask about wireless telephones, but we didn't have time to include those results in the survey or this particular presentation. The satisfaction with access to wireless phone systems is a little bit better in terms of the competitive options available, because they do tend to cross-pollinate across the country.

Industry committee  It's difficult to ask a smaller company that's providing Internet service to create and build whole new lines. We're a big country in lots of different ways and so we need to make sure that they have access to the lines that already exist, many of which were built through government programs and subsidies with bigger companies at one time.