Bill C-28 (Historical)

Financial Literacy Leader Act

An Act to amend the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada Act

This enactment amends the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada Act to create the position of Financial Literacy Leader within the Agency. The Leader is to be appointed by the Governor in Council to exercise leadership at the national level to strengthen the financial literacy of Canadians. The amendments also provide for the other powers, duties and functions of the Financial Literacy Leader.

Financial Literacy Leader Act

[Gordon O'Connor, Conservative, Carleton—Mississippi Mills, ON]

moved that Bill C-28, An Act to amend the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance]

Mr. Speaker, this is a wonderful opportunity to kick off debate at second reading for Bill C-28, the financial literacy leader act.

Before continuing, I would like to acknowledge and applaud the work of the chair of the finance committee and the member for Edmonton—Leduc for championing financial literacy in Parliament through his Motion No. 269. Today's legislation is a clear indication that his motion has helped to draw attention to the issue and has highlighted the need for swift action.

This is relatively short and straightforward legislation designed to establish the position of a financial literacy leader within the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada. Nevertheless, today's bill is very important because it gives Canadian families what they need: the right tools to make the best financial decisions.

We live in a world with a growing number of increasingly complex financial products and services, all with different rewards and risks, which may not be the easiest to understand: insurance, mortgages, investments, online banking, savings accounts, loans, lines of credit, retirement savings accounts, cellphone contracts, debit and credit cards, and the list just goes on and on. What is more, the list of products and services available to Canadians gets longer every year, making it even more difficult for busy moms and dads to stay on top of the risks, fees and potential returns.

In such a rapidly changing environment, financial literacy is vital to help Canadians make informed and responsible financial choices. Improved financial literacy can translate into higher savings levels and decreased indebtedness. It gives consumers the tools and knowledge they need to pick the products and services that are right for them.

As the Canadian Taxpayers Federation has said:

Financial literacy is an important life skill. Canadians make financial decisions throughout their lives, many of which involve significant risks and rewards. Improving financial literacy helps consumers act knowledgeably and with confidence in managing their personal financial affairs. Informed consumer decision-making, in turn, contributes to the maintenance of a well-functioning and stable financial system and a stronger economy.

The Canadian Association of Credit Counselling Services has said:

By embracing financial literacy, individuals and families can discover a new sense of personal control and mastery over their financial matters.

Our government is in complete agreement. That is why we have taken major steps since 2006 to improve financial literacy in Canada. The first of these steps was the creation of the task force on financial literacy under Canada’s economic action plan, as set out in the 2009 budget.

The task force, composed of leaders from consumer groups, the financial sector, the media and academia, got down to work. However it was not content to hold closed-door meetings in Ottawa. It went out to meet directly with Canadians, and more importantly still, to listen to them.

It launched a public consultation tour from one end of the country to the other, going to every province and territory to hear from Canadians themselves what they think about this important issue.

In the course of these wide-ranging consultations, public sessions were held in over a dozen Canadian cities, ranging from the big urban centres such as Toronto, Calgary and Montreal to more remote places like Iqaluit and Yellowknife.

The task force thus had the opportunity to meet in person with close to 200 individuals and organizations. It also received briefs, through its website, and even held an online forum for those who were unable to attend the public sessions.

I am happy to note that the consultation process was very positively received by Canadians, leading to tremendous feedback. By the end of the consultation period, the task force had received more than 300 submissions. In addition to what it heard from Canadians, the task force also drew on its review of Canadian and international best practices and conducted additional research on financial literacy.

Combining the feedback received from its consultations with its additional research, the task force then produced a final report. The report is entitled “Canadians and Their Money: Building a brighter financial future”. It was publicly released in February 2011 and outlined 30 key recommendations to improve the financial literacy of Canadians. I encourage all Canadians watching at home to take a moment to visit the website at www.financialliteracyincanada.com.

On the website, Canadians can learn about the work of the task force, review its detailed research and read the final report. The report highlights the importance of improving financial literacy in Canada and the urgency to get it done. The task force states:

Financial literacy is critical to the prosperity and well-being of Canadians. It is more than a nice-to-have skill. It is a necessity in today’s world--and, moving forward, should be treated as such by policy-makers, educators, employers and other stakeholders across the country. The time for action is now.

As I mentioned, the report outlined 30 recommendations to support its call to action. The task force's number one recommendation was as follows:

The Task Force recommends that the Government of Canada appoint an individual, directly accountable to the Minister of Finance, to serve as dedicated national leader. This Financial Literacy Leader should have the mandate to work collaboratively with stakeholders to oversee the National Strategy, implement the recommendations and champion financial literacy on behalf of all Canadians.

The task force's rationale for this recommendation was that while excellent work was being done across Canada to improve financial literacy, it was clear long-term improvements would:

—require a focused, centrally recognized champion. Clear leadership and coordination are needed at the national level. Sustained, steady progress over the long term is unlikely to be achieved without dedicated stewardship.

As such, the task force concluded that the government should create a position to lead and champion financial literacy and to successfully implement its own recommendations going forward.

The financial literacy leader act would do exactly that by proposing to amend the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada Act to allow for the appointment of a financial literacy leader.

Furthermore, the amendments proposed in the bill under consideration will allow the agency to work together with various stakeholders to support and contribute to financial literacy projects.

The bill also establishes the duties, powers and functions of the financial literacy leader. It will among other things enable the leader to conduct activities in support of this objective and it sets out the conditions of employment.

The appointment of someone to this important position, and the implementation of the other recommendations made by the task force, will lead to enormous progress towards improving financial literacy here in Canada.

This act, together with the many other steps taken by our government, will contribute to the financial security of all Canadians.

This includes the $5 million we invest annually in the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada, sometimes known as the FCAC. By making this investment, we support FCAC in its efforts to help Canadians increase their knowledge and confidence in managing their personal finances. In carrying out this role, the agency also ensures that federally-regulated financial institutions, like banks, provide required information to their consumers in a transparent and timely manner and comply with all other consumer laws and regulations.

There are so many ways in which the Financial Consumer Agency is already hard at work helping Canadians, making it the perfect home for the financial literacy leader. For instance, the agency provides consumers with useful information about which credit cards may or may not be right for them, including comparison charts outlining the rates and features of the many credit cards offered in Canada.

It is an important service as there are more than 200 credit cards available on the market for Canadians to choose from. While having so many choices can benefit consumers through greater competition, decisions about which card is best can be challenging if the information is unclear. That is why it is vital that consumers have access to initiatives like those already provided by the agency, which can help them increase their understanding of different interest rates and potential fees.

To even better help Canadian consumers understand the forms they are signing, the FCAC has also created a new consumer-friendly model credit card application form that many major credit card providers have adopted.

The agency has also developed innovative methods of helping Canadians, such as a tool for rapidly calculating mortgage payments and potential savings that can result from accelerated payment plans. It also provides targeted online information to help consumers choose those bank products that best suit their needs.

Young people also benefit from FCAC financial literacy programs. The City, an educational program, is a very good example of this. It is an interactive Web tool designed to help young Canadians between 15 and 18 years of age to acquire financial skills. I highly recommend to all Canadians that they visit the FCAC site at www.fcac-acfc.gc.ca to familiarize themselves with the tools available to make their lives easier.

FCAC will also be the perfect home for the financial literacy leader as the leader can quickly build on the important work the agency has already started. For instance, a number of community-based and non-profit organizations collaborated with the FCAC to make November financial literacy month. In fact, 75 organizations in all presented at 200 events and outreach initiatives across the country. This type of grassroots level collaboration will go a long way toward improving financial literacy in Canada, especially with the added support of the financial literacy leader.

I would, however, note that our Conservative government understands that even with the appointment of a financial literacy leader, sometimes even more will be required. While we do not believe, like the NDP, that the government should dictate and excessively regulate every aspect of a private business, we do believe in the importance of transparency, proper monitoring, consumer choice and competition. Indeed, when necessary, we have shown that we are ready to act to defend the rights of consumers.

That is why only recently our Conservative government acted to protect Canadians who used credit cards. After all, the last thing Canadians need is a surprise on their credit card statement at the end of the month.

The measures we introduced mandated that clear and simple information be displayed on credit card application forms and contracts and required companies to provide advance notice of changes in rates and fees. We also limited credit business practices that did not benefit consumers.

We introduced changes that required credit card issuers to provide consumers with a minimum 21-day interest-free grace period on all new purchases when consumers paid their balance in full by the due date. We also required a minimum 21-day grace period on all new purchases in a billing period, even if consumers had an outstanding balance they carried forward.

We moved important information, such as interest rates, grace periods and fees, off of the fine print buried in credit applications and contracts and into a prominent summary box so consumers would know exactly what kind of financial arrangement they were agreeing to when they signed an application. This measure also provides a clear picture of their debt load as they pay it off.

These initiatives are in effect today and are providing Canadian consumers with precisely the kind of improved financial information that leads to better decision making. Indeed, the president of the Consumers' Association of Canada welcomed these moves, declaring, “All of the things that the Finance Minister has done are actually just what we asked for...overall I've got to congratulate him”.

We have also introduced many other measures to better protect consumers. For example, we have prohibited negative optioning for financial products. We have also made mortgage insurance more transparent and reduced the hold period for funds deposited by cheque.

Before concluding, I would like to emphasize the importance of financial literacy and the need to pass the bill currently under review. Improving their knowledge of financial matters will help Canadians who want to save for retirement, buy a house or simply balance the family cheque book, and will also make our financial system more competitive and stable and our economy stronger.

That is why the government has set a priority on improving the financial skills of Canadians and why it plans to appoint a financial literacy leader.

In view of the growing number of financial services, it is essential to ensure that Canadians have effective tools and sound knowledge so that they can feel confident in their financial decisions.

In the words of Peter Nares, the executive director of Social and Enterprise Development Innovations:

[This] is the first step in a process that could help Canadians make better financial decisions. It could also help Canadians better weather the economic storms that will inevitably blow through the global economy from time to time.

That is why I urge the House to vote in support of the financial literacy leader act. I implore members of the opposition to take under consideration the fact that many consumers groups and consumers have been asking for these protections and that it is only fit for them to vote in favour of moving forward on this very important recommendation made by the task force. We intend to see this through.

[Glenn Thibeault, NDP, Sudbury, ON]

Mr. Speaker, once again, we are here discussing an issue that I believe is important to both the hon. member and me, as well as both of our parties. However, I liken this bill to cotton candy. It is very sweet, it smells good, it looks good, but there is absolutely no substance to it.

The hon. member talked about the recommendations and how the government is bringing forward the bill based on the recommendations. The original recommendation coming from the task force was that the financial literacy leader needed to have an advisory council that would include labour, voluntary groups, educators, as well as business stakeholders. That is not in this bill. Here is an important aspect of what the task force talked about and once again the government is ignoring it and just following through on what its ideology is.

I would like to hear the hon. member's comments on that.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

Mr. Speaker, both the NDP and the Conservatives talk a lot about consumer debt and how we might protect consumers. It is only this side of the House, though, that actually votes in favour of measures that will protect consumers.

I would remind the member that this act will in fact put in place a financial literacy leader who will be tasked as the champion for making sure that the other recommendations in this report are seen and moved forward.

We cannot put the cart before the horse, which is what the NDP member is asking. Therefore, I would expect that he and his party do the right thing and vote in favour of this legislation so we can in fact get that cart and buggy moving forward to protect consumers. They have to stop putting forward obstacles that make absolutely no sense.

Therefore, I would recommend that the member speak to his party and vote in favour of our measures.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, most of us in the House and elsewhere recognize that financial literacy is important at this time, especially as we try to deal more seriously with the issues of pensions and so on. However, given the times that we are in, with the layoffs and job losses of many public servants here in Ottawa and throughout the country, I am questioning the timing. How do we deal with the issue of the laying off so many public servants throughout the country and establishing other departments?

Second, I see that the Parliamentary Budget Officer is starved for resources, as are Elections Canada and many other parts of the federal government family. How is the government going to rectify that?

Is the new office going to have enough resources and what costs are we are looking at? Will the government just create that office then not give it the resources it needs to do a very important job?

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it did not sound like the question had anything at all to do with the subject, that is, the financial literacy leader being put in place to act on the 30 recommendations of the task force, but I will answer the member's question.

The answer to the jobs problem is not what the Liberals have proposed. It is definitely not increasing corporate taxes. It is definitely not increasing CPP. It is definitely not supporting a 45-day work year as proposed by the member's party, the Liberal Party. Much of that is actually supported by the NDP.

We have a low tax agenda to create jobs and to give people hope and opportunity to make sure that they can thrive in Canada. We will not destroy that hope and opportunity by further taxing Canadians and destroying the job creators out there. We will not kill jobs as proposed by the Liberals and NDP. We are going to continue on our fiscal track for prosperity. We are going to continue on a track of economic growth. We are going to protect all Canadians with the budget that will be announced very shortly.

[Kellie Leitch, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development and to the Minister of Labour]

Mr. Speaker, after the work the task force has done, I think we all know how terribly important a financial literacy leader is to all Canadians. People in my riding of Simcoe—Grey, particularly older ones, want to make sure that things are crystal clear to them from the information they are receiving. As the member mentioned, we need to make sure that we have the horse before the cart: we need to make sure that we have the leadership in place first before we move forward.

I wonder if the member could please expand upon what the financial literacy leader will mean for Canadians.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I know how hard my colleague works to help us move forward our agenda with regard not only to jobs and economic growth but also to protecting Canadians' social services and programs. I do want to take a moment to thank her for her dedication.

The bill before us today would allow the financial literacy leader to move forward on those recommendations to make sure that we are protecting consumers and that financial institutions understand how very important it is to make sure things are clear, to make sure that consumers understand what they are buying into, when dealing with either credit cards or contracts or mortgages.

The bill would allow the financial literacy leader to start taking those steps forward. We have spoken with so many different stakeholders but we have not heard any complaints about moving this forward. The task force did a fantastic job. We should take this priority recommendation of theirs and make it happen. We need the support of the opposition to do that in a timely manner. I suggest those members vote in favour of the bill.

[Tarik Brahmi, NDP, Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened very carefully to the speech given by the hon. member for Saint Boniface.

The OECD report “Financial Literacy and Consumer Protection” says that financial literacy has to be a complement to, rather than a substitute for, a framework for the regulation and prudential supervision of capital markets.

What does the hon. member think about the OECD statement?

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for his question.

As I said earlier, we are talking about a financial literacy leader who will take into consideration all the information available. As I said, we need the NDP to vote in support of this act, so that the financial literacy leader can implement the measures that the hon. member is referring to.

Once again, I suggest that he vote with us to move the bill forward.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

There are two minutes remaining in questions and comments for the hon. parliamentary secretary. However, the time for government orders has expired.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-28, An Act to amend the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Glenn Thibeault, NDP, Sudbury, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to point out some of the glaring problems in the government's bill, in its attitude to consumer protection in general and in regard to financial literacy specifically.

Obviously, a basic understanding of financial literacy is a good thing. Understanding how much the difference between a 5% and a 5.5% APR will cost over the lifetime of a loan, how long it will take to pay off a credit card if only the minimum payment is made each month, how much one needs to save each month for school or a car or to put money away for a down payment on a house or for retirement is clearly a benefit. The problem is that the government seems to think that encouraging these skills is a suitable substitute for a proper regime of consumer protection, retirement security and a proper strategy for economic growth.

This bill embodies the government's strategy or, more properly, the lack of strategy in addressing the issues that really matter to working and middle-class Canadians across the country. Specifically, the bill would create a financial literacy leader, a high level bureaucrat position, with the aim of encouraging financial literacy in the general public. At the same time, the government is calling on departments and agencies to slash spending. When the media is full of stories of tens of thousands of public servants being laid off, the government's answer to addressing this issue is to create a new, highly paid position. If we could guarantee that the position would be successful, that would be defendable, but there are a number of flaws in this bill, which leads me to believe that this position has little chance of success to start with.

The terms of reference for this position are extremely vague. While the holder of the post would be required to advance financial literacy, there is no definition of what constitutes financial literacy within the bill, nor any attempt to define how we could or should advance it.

Moreover, the original recommendation to create this position was very clear on the need for an advisory council that would include labour, voluntary groups and educators, as well as business stakeholders. They would be there to direct the work of the financial literacy leader. This bill does not include any legislation to create this advisory council and, as such, there is very little in the way of accountability.

Additionally, there is no proviso in the bill that would ensure that this position would be filled by someone who is fluent in both official languages. To me, it would seem necessary that someone who is expected to teach and encourage Canadians about financial literacy would be able to communicate in both French and English.

How able are we to teach financial literacy to Canadians? Human Resources and Skills Development Canada stats tell us that 26% of Canadians struggle with basic numeracy and that 20% struggle with basic literacy. However, the same government that is trying to sell Canadians on financial literacy being the answer to the economic problem is the same one that cut $17.7 million to adult literacy programs in 2006.

Without basic numeracy and literacy skills, how does the government expect Canadians to understand some of the more complex financial vehicles, which will apparently provide for them in their retirement.

Even for people who do not struggle with numeracy and literacy, finance is not a particularly comprehensible subject. As Barry McKenna, a business columnist for The Globe and Mail, states:

Looking to financial literacy to fill the void is like asking ordinary Canadians to be their own brain surgeons and airline pilots. The dizzying array of financial products, mixed with chaotic and increasingly irrational financial markets, makes the job of do-it-yourself financial planning almost impossible--no matter how literate you are. The average credit-card agreement is as intuitive as quantum physics.

It is clear from all the money spent by banks and other financial institutions on encouraging financial literacy that they see some benefit to it, but to what end? It does not take a genius to conclude that the banks like financial literacy because it allows them to expand their customer base. Encouraging people to take out savings and investment funds creates lucrative fees for banks and brokers. In fact, according to Morningstar, an investment research company, Canadian fees for equity funds are some of the highest in the world, being, on average, around two and a half times higher than fees in the United States.

Financial literacy, in this sense, is essentially a marketing exercise to create good customers. It teaches the benefits of saving vehicles but it is not necessarily critical of how financial vehicles work. It does not criticize plans where fund managers take a substantial fee regardless of the performance of the fund. It does not highlight how funds, like the CPP, regularly outperform private funds. It does not give enough weight to the inherent dangers of investing in the stock market.

As Paul Farrell, a MarketWatch columnist for The Washington Post puts it:

In spite of all the public hype about financial-literacy programs, the fact is Wall Street [or Bay Street] doesn’t want smart investors.

Bottom line: The last thing [its] wants is 95 million investors who are wise to [its]...games. ...revenues would drop substantially if financially literacy really did work.

Even more worrying is the possibility that we increase the quantity of financial literacy available but without ensuring its quality. This has two dangerous and interlinked consequences. The first is that the model shifts all the blame off banks and onto consumers. At the individual level, people are to be blamed for their own uninformed choices and, at the national or even international level, systemic problems are no longer the fault of the banks that lend beyond their means but the individuals who borrowed too much. Obviously, individuals do have a responsibility to manage their own finances but the banks, hedge funds and other financial institutions have the ability to effect the economy in a much more profound way than individual consumers, and we must not forget that.

What do we do for the people who actually end up worse off due to financial investments that fail? We need to understand that some people will lose their savings when businesses go bust or when the stock market drops. This has been the way the stock market has worked since the first recognizable stock exchange opened in Amsterdam in the 17th century.

What about those people who simply do not have the type of disposable income required to invest in their futures, the people who live paycheque to paycheque, the people who have seen their wages stagnate and fall in real terms since the mid 1990s? For both of these groups of people, a social safety net and regulatory system based on so-called financial literacy is a failure.

Lauren Willis, a professor at Loyola Law School, sums up these problems. He says:

For some consumers, financial education appears to increase confidence without improving ability, potentially leading to worse decisions. When consumers find themselves in dire financial straits, the regulation through education model blames them for their plight, shaming them and deflecting calls for effective market regulation. Requiring consumers to act as their own financial experts is socially inefficient.

What should the government do to fix Canada's broken system of financial consumer protection? For a start, it could build on what it is already doing, rather than trying to reinvent the wheel. The Financial Consumer Agency of Canada has already been commended for the work it has done in regard to financial literacy by earning a public service award of excellence in citizen-focused service delivery from the Treasury Board in 2010.

If the government feels that financial literacy is something worth pursuing, why does it not spend money on programs that have already proven effective, rather than starting from scratch in a program that we cannot be sure will be successful and will likely be more expensive due to the financial literacy leader's salary and office costs?

The government should recognize that for a large portion of Canadians a lack of savings is a reflection of the disparity between the rise in the cost of living and the rise in wages over the last 15 years or so. Encouraging savings is fine for people who have disposable income after they have paid for essentials. Unfortunately, however, for all too many people, taking on debt is not a choice. It is the only way to survive.

An OECD report published in 2011 pointed out that the trend toward a less progressive tax structure and a more unequal society here in Canada began in the mid-1990s under the then Liberal government and has continued since 2006 under the Conservatives.

As Canadian economist, Jim Stanford, noted in his submission to the national financial literacy task force:

Personal savings will never constitute an important source of financial security for the strong majority of Canadians who cannot save, given the paucity of their incomes.

This argument was reported by numerous submissions to the task force but these points were noticeably absent from the final report. It simply did not meet the goal of the task force to point out that the very thing it was pushing may not have all of the answers. Financial institutions already make a large amount of money from these individuals who are forced to carry credit card debt from month to month and who are unable to keep the significant balance in their current accounts required by banks to waive the monthly service fees. If the government really wanted to give these people an opportunity to build up their own savings, then it would regulate these types of fees and the level of interest that is charged on credit cards in order to allow people to put aside a bit of money every month.

Similarly, if the government wants to ensure that Canadians have adequate savings when they retire, the way forward is not to create a new and inherently risky vehicle for private savings. There are already multiple methods for Canadians to save for their future, as RRSPs and TFSAs spring to mind, if they have the funds available to invest, and these vehicles are already supported and funded by the government. Studies have shown that the highest earning 11% of Canadians contribute more to RRSPs than the bottom 89% of tax filers combined. Because of the tax benefits of investing in RRSPs, Canadian taxpayers subsidize that contribution by the top 11% of earners to the tune of $7.3 billion in annual net tax expenditures.

The creation of pooled registered pension plans, or PRPPs, would only benefit those people who are already able to invest in their retirement. They would do nothing for the 30% of Canadian families that lack any form of retirement savings outside of the CPP.

Encouraging people to invest in a risky vehicle on the stock market is not real leadership on financial planning. It simply passes the entire risk and blame for an individual not having adequate retirement savings onto that individual. Now we have the Conservatives musing about delaying the age at which Canadians are eligible for OAS from 65 to 67. How can Canadians properly expect to plan for their retirement when the government tries to change the rules of the game?

If the government were truly interested in Canadians' retirement security and in allowing Canadians to properly plan for their retirement, it would make far more sense to say categorically that it will not change the eligibility age for the OAS and commit to the NDP plan to expand the guaranteed Canada–Quebec pension plan by phasing in an affordable doubling of benefits to a maximum of $1,920 a month. This plan has been called for by provinces across the country as it would give Canadians both the ability to plan for their retirement and a guaranteed income to ensure they can retire with dignity.

Moreover, the CPP is a much safer investment than market-based private funds and consistently outperforms the market. Even business columnists, like the aforementioned Barrie McKenna at The Globe and Mail, have pointed out the benefit of such a policy, stating:

And Ottawa could beef up the CPP, mandating Canadians sock away more money for retirement, while benefiting from the CPP's low costs.

However, so far the government and the Minister of Finance in particular have not listened to this appeal for a real and proven way of ensuring Canadians can retire with dignity.

In summary, it worries me that so much time and effort will be taken up by this piece of legislation which is little more than spin carried out by the government. If this were such an important thing for the government to move forward with, I wonder why it could not be included in the financial system review act rather than being a stand-alone act. It appears to me the only reason these did not go together was that the government hoped it could get some positive media out of this legislation. However, as I have pointed out, this legislation is deeply flawed because it does so little to address the real problems affecting Canadians. This so-called solution is the equivalent to using a band-aid to fix a broken leg.

The NDP believes in real measures to protect consumers, seniors and low-income Canadians. Unfortunately, the government is not interested in anything more than spin and publicity when it comes to this issue. At a time when the government keeps talking about spending cuts, I think there are far better ways the government could spend the funds that would be spent to bring forward this proposal.

My colleagues in the official opposition and I will continue to stand up for policies that really help hard-working Canadians. Unfortunately, this is not such a policy, which is why I will be voting against the bill as presented.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Cooperation]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased that we are having the opportunity to debate this piece of legislation. I personally think that knowledge is power and the more often we can educate Canadians on their financial literacy, the better off we are going to be in the long run.

I am very pleased that many of the banking institutions in Newmarket—Aurora have seen fit to open their premises to hold seminars for constituents. They too believe that knowledge is power and that every opportunity to give people more information about financial literacy is going to be of assistance to them. I am sorry to hear that the opposition is not going to assist.

I note the bill says that we are going to collaborate and coordinate activities with stakeholders to contribute to and support initiatives to strengthen the financial literacy of Canadians. Could the member speak to institutions in his riding which may be looking to partner with us on these initiatives and work with the banking institutions that are there?

[Glenn Thibeault, NDP, Sudbury, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I agree there are many institutions right across the country that are having to hold seminars and town halls because of the government's inaction on protecting consumers, because of the government's inaction on making sure that consumers understand their credit card bills.

The government is all talk. I said earlier that it is like cotton candy. The government's action on consumer protection is like cotton candy: it is sweet and fluffy, but there is absolutely no substance.

When we look at the financial task force report, when it talked about creating a financial literacy leader, one thing it said very clearly in the original recommendation was that the leader have an advisory council that includes educators, the banking institutions and business leaders. What is not included in the bill is that recommendation. That being said, we cannot support the bill unless there are more teeth in it.

[Raymond Côté, NDP, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I must thank my hon. colleague from Sudbury. I admire his candour and his clear-sightedness in the field we are discussing.

As I read the bill, basically I ask myself what the government’s objective is. It is entirely laudable to want to educate people about financial matters, but there is no way that the government can offer any lessons in that regard. It has created an undue proliferation of absolutely needless tax measures and has enormously complicated the federal tax return. The proof is statistics published a few months ago indicating that roughly half of Canadians do not complete their own tax return because it is too complicated for them.

Finally, what is the good of trying to educate people about a system that is already too complicated? I would ask my colleague what he thinks of this observation, and doubtless to elaborate.

[Glenn Thibeault, NDP, Sudbury, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. colleague for the question and, as our small business critic, for all of his great work on that file. This relates to small business, to consumers and to all Canadians.

Everyone in this House will agree that financial literacy is truly an important subject and an important issue for all Canadians. However, this bill does not make financial literacy the priority. It makes creating the leader of a financial literacy organization with costs that go with it the priority. There is no talk in this bill about terms of reference that are going to point to what we should be bringing forward, how we should define it and how we should advance it. Those are the things this bill needs to include.

As I mentioned before, the original recommendation from the financial literacy task force talked about ensuring there is an advisory council. This bill does not include that. If we are taking the recommendations of the financial literacy task force, which we also had some concerns with, then we need to ensure those recommendations are there. The member asked his question in French and while I am working on my French, one of the most important things is that this bill does not include a proviso that the person should be able to speak in both official languages.

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

Mr. Speaker, when I first read this bill I had a lot of trouble trying to figure out what the heck it was about. What on earth are the Conservatives trying to accomplish? They have created a bureaucracy with apparently no goal. There is no definition anywhere in the bill, so far as I can tell, and perhaps the member can tell me what the goal of a financial literacy leader is. What is his or her mandate? What are his or her powers? What are his or her abilities? Who are the stakeholders the person should be consulting? What the heck are they doing? Could the member help me with that?

[Glenn Thibeault, NDP, Sudbury, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I too had a similar reaction when I first read the bill. I thought that this bill had actually become a job posting.

The Conservatives are talking about creating, bringing forward and hiring a new financial literacy leader. As the member mentioned, when we go through the bill, the mandate and the terms of reference are extremely vague. There is no definition in the bill of what constitutes financial literacy. We are not talking about how it is going to be advanced, how we are going to move forward with this. Are we going to have an advisory council like the recommendations from the national financial literacy task force brought forward?

We need to ensure that we are consulting with the people who know how to bring forward the topic of financial literacy. Let us have the business community involved. Let us have industry leaders. Let us have educators. Let us have labour. Everyone who would be involved with this needs to be able to have a say and to guide the financial literacy leader. That is not currently in the legislation. That is why we on this side of the House cannot support it, when there is no mandate and it is just spending money.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am surprised that members say they have read the legislation, because it starts by saying that this is “An Act to amend the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada Act”, which means that this is just a small portion of what that act is all about. I wonder how the member can say that it does not specify, because it states:

“(g) collaborate and coordinate its activities with stakeholders to contribute to and support initiatives to strengthen the financial literacy of Canadians”.

This should be no surprise to the members on the opposite side of the House. We said we were going to bring this forward. It was part of our throne speech. We have been very specific about helping Canadians to understand some of the complexities of what is going on in financial markets and how they can respond as individuals to the things that are happening there.

Does the member not think that helping people get that kind of knowledge, in whatever form it comes, is going to be of benefit to his own constituents?

[Glenn Thibeault, NDP, Sudbury, ON]

Mr. Speaker, once again I will reiterate that of course everyone in this House agrees that financial literacy is important; however, the bill does not express that in its mandate. The hon. member talks about collaboration and coordination. It does not specifically talk about the recommendations that were brought forward by the task force. We cannot go with, “Trust us, it's in there”. We have too many examples where it has not happened.

We are saying that right now as it is presented this bill does not do what it is supposed to do, which is provide a complex and mandated way forward for Canadians to improve their financial literacy.

[Tarik Brahmi, NDP, Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague from Sudbury made a comprehensive speech. One detail which he pointed out was that financial literacy should not be a substitute but a complement to actions and real measures from the government. Could he comment on that?

[Glenn Thibeault, NDP, Sudbury, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is so true. Financial literacy cannot be the one crutch we lean on to say that we have made sure everyone is educated so now we can wash our hands of what we need to do.

We need a strong economic plan. We are not seeing that. We need to ensure that consumer protection is a priority. We have seen that whittled down by Liberal and Conservative governments time and time again. We need to ensure we are standing up and protecting Canadians. This bill does not do it. We have a plan that will.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we all agree that financial literacy is important, that it is a good thing, but that is not the subject of today’s debate. The issue is whether or not this bill is going to strengthen financial literacy. And on that point I must say that I have many doubts about this bill.

As I said, we are supportive of financial literacy. Who would not be? We are deeply concerned about the lack of information in the bill. it is my hope that the government will clarify further detail in the course of this debate.

We can all agree that increasing the financial literacy of Canadians is an important goal for government, both federal and provincial. A more financially literate population would be a more prosperous population. But financial literacy is not the panacea that the Conservative Party seems to pretend it to be.

Far too often over the past six years we have been told by the government that problems like increasing post-secondary education costs and rising household debt can simply be solved by waving this magic wand of financial literacy. This is simply incorrect. There are a number of policy levers the government can operate to help solve the issues of rising household debt or runaway student debt. Increased financial literacy is one of them. My goal is not to downplay the importance of financial literacy but only to point out that it is not the only policy solution available to the government.

Let me turn now to the contents of the bill. I get the distinct impression that Bill C-28 was written on the back of an envelope, that the primary motive was probably to have an “announceable” for Financial Literacy Month last November, because it is virtually content-free. I will explain.

The bill and its supporting documents are completely devoid of any detail as to how the office of the financial literacy leader would even work. The bill does not specify if there would even be an office of the financial literacy leader or if he or she would simply be one more employee at FCAC.

Bill C-28 was a response to the recommendations of the Task Force on Financial Literacy. The task force was created as part of the 2009 budget. It reported back to the minister early last year. The task force had 30 recommendations. This legislation satisfies only a part of one of the recommendations.

The first recommendation was that the government create the position of financial literacy leader and that this person be charged with improving financial literacy across Canada. It also said the financial literacy leader should report directly to the Minister of Finance. Under this legislation this position would report to the commissioner of FCAC. Let us give the government half a point for getting recommendation 1 half right. Its total score then is one-half of one point out of thirty. If I were back in my professor days, I do not think that would be a passing grade.

The bill would also give FCAC the power to impose a levy on the banks in order to pay for its efforts in improving financial literacy. But it would also give the Minister of Finance the power to spend government money to achieve the same objective. As parliamentarians, we are yet again being asked to vote on a bill that causes the government to incur costs, spend money and perhaps tax banks without being given even a hint of the numbers involved.

Liberals, indeed all parliamentarians, should not have a problem with spending resources to improve financial literacy. However, we do want to know the order of magnitude these expenditures and the related taxes would be on. Are we talking about $100,000, $500,000, $1 million, $10 million? We have no idea, because there is nothing in the bill to tell us what this process would involve other than the naming of this one person. The question of how much things would cost is important because many of the other recommendations from the task force's report would require additional effort and financial commitment on the part of the government.

For example, recommendation 2 requires the government to establish an advisory board on financial literacy. The advisory board would help the financial literacy leader to develop a national strategy on financial literacy.

Recommendation 4 requires the national strategy to incorporate financial literacy in the school curriculums across Canada and at all levels of education. This would obviously require coordination with provincial governments and may I suggest the direct ministerial mandate asked for in the task force's first recommendation.

Recommendation 9 suggests that financial literacy material be delivered to Canadians through programs that reach Canadians directly, such as EI, CPP, OAS or the universal child care benefit. There are many such requirements and they will all cost money.

Surely the government must have some idea of the anticipated costs. Yet there is no mention of any of these recommendations or any actions to be taken or not to be taken in the bill. Therefore, we are all left totally in the dark as to what, if anything significant, this leader would accomplish, how much money it would cost and what the scope of the mandate would be.

This is not the first time that the House of Commons has been asked to vote on legislation without knowing the cost. The most prominent case that comes to mind is Bill C-10, the tough on crime compendium of bills. The government did not tell us what the additional costs would be for new prisons. We know from the Parliamentary Budget Officer that it is many billions of dollars. We know that some of those billions would be downloaded onto the provinces. The government did not come clean on that and it was a far more important case in terms of expenditure of funds than this would be. However, it is the same principle. The government wants us to pass legislation, but tell us nothing about what it would actually do and what it would actually cost.

This similar issue has caught the attention of the government operations committee, which is currently conducting a study on how Parliament considers supply and more broadly how we as parliamentarians are presented with information on the government spending plan. I would certainly suggest that not knowing the cost of bills before we vote on them is just one part of this problem.

Back to the contents of the bill, there are other existing mechanisms at the disposal of the federal government to promote financial literacy. For example, the Canadian Foundation for Economic Education was created in 1974 as a non-profit, non-partisan organization with the goal of promoting greater financial literacy. It already has tremendous buy-in from government and from the private sector. A quick scan of its website indicates that its list of board of directors include prominent members of the private, post-secondary and labour sectors. On the government side, the CFEE has relationships with the federal Department of Finance and numerous ministries of education provincially.

I know this group from my earlier incarnation with the Royal Bank as their chief economist and I had several meetings with this group. I know that they were working diligently. However, it certainly is not obvious from the bill, which tells us virtually nothing, why the addition of one more body in the bowels of the federal bureaucracy would improve financial literacy better than the work being carried out by the Canadian Foundation for Economic Education.

In the end, the issue I have with the bill is that we simply do not know what the government is planning to do. We do know that it may involve taxing banks. We know that it may involve spending more government funds, but we have no idea how much. We do not know the size of this new organization. We do not know which of the other recommendations from the Task Force on Financial Literacy would be carried out. We know very little, virtually nothing about it.

As I said at the outset, improving financial literacy is an important task for the federal government. However, we have concerns on this side of the House that the newly created financial literacy leader would not be able to carry out his important task.

There is another side of this coin. We can talk about the need for greater financial literacy on the part of Canadians, but we can also talk about the problem of financial illiteracy on the part of the Conservative government.

I would like to say a few words on the financial illiteracy of the Conservative government. I think if there needs to be a course in financial literacy, the first ones to enrol in such a course should probably be the members sitting opposite.

My first example of Conservative financial illiteracy goes way back to 2006. Prior to the arrival of the current government in 2006, for many years Canadians had to have at least a 5% down payment on a mortgage. The longest mortgage they could get was 25 years. What did these financial wizards do in 2006? Instead of a 25 year maximum period, they made it 40 years.

Instead of a 5% minimum down payment, they made it zero. Brilliant. Magic. People could get a zero down payment mortgage for 40 years under the Conservative government.

Now, the problem is that this is like the subprime mortgages in the U.S. Eventually, they found out, but did not admit it because the Conservatives would never admit they made a mistake. They discovered they had made a mistake, so they put it back from 40 years down to 35 years, and they brought the minimum payment up from zero to 5%. Then they claimed credit for tightening the system.

However, the system is not back to where it was when the Conservatives arrived. It is still looser. That is the first example of financial illiteracy.

So I suggest that the Minister of Finance and some of his colleagues enrol in financial literacy 101. If they do, maybe their performance will improve.

The second example of financial illiteracy is the fact that the Conservatives were so lucky when they inherited a massive $13 billion Liberal surplus when they came to power. Then they proceeded to spend like drunken sailors. They are the biggest spenders in Canadian history, to the point where these Conservatives actually ate through all that surplus and went into deficit before the recession began.

That is a second reason for the Minister of Finance to enrol in that course which I shall call financial literacy 101. It is important to have a prudent fiscal policy. It is not good financial literacy to blow through a $13 billion surplus by spending madly when the economy is strong. One might have a deficit when the economy is weak, but one should not run through a surplus when times are good, with massive spending just before a recession begins.

I have a third example of this government’s lack of financial literacy. That is its plan for massive cuts in government spending at a time when the Canadian economy is very fragile. It is suggesting reductions on the order of $4 billion or even $8 billion in public spending and reductions of government services to Canadians. It will be doing this at a time when the economy is very weak.

Let us not forget that unemployment remains high; let us not forget that there is a crisis in Europe; let us not forget that the U.S. economy is extremely weak.

We are living in a world where the unemployment rate remains too high and where the level of risk is very high everywhere, compared with the past.

In this context of a hugely fragile weak economy, anyone who went through financial literacy 101 would know that this is not the moment to have massive cuts in government spending, massive layoffs of public servants and massive reductions in the services provided to Canadians. It is not a good idea.

Members do not have to believe me, I will invoke the name of Christine Lagarde, managing director of the IMF. The IMF is the mother of all fiscally prudent people. Typically the IMF calls for countries to cut. Christine Lagarde recently said that countries which have room, and this might not include Greece but it certainly includes Canada, should in the short run focus on measures to create jobs and support the economy, and in the medium term they should have a credible plan to balance the books and bring down debt. That is not me talking, that is the head of the IMF. The chief economist of BMO had said something similar, that making massive cuts at this time is as crazy as what Herbert Hoover did in the U.S. during the Great Depression.

As I said earlier, I think members of the government, maybe even the Prime Minister, might like to enrol in this course which we could set up called financial literacy 101.

If they do this, there will be at least three subjects. The first is that it is not smart to have mortgages amortized over 40 years with no capital outlay. That makes no sense. We saw this in the United States, but this government changed the system for the worse in 2006. Second, when you inherit a $13 billion surplus, it is not financially prudent to spend all of those funds when the economy is strong and to go into deficit even before the recession. That is not a good example of financial literacy.

That is what this Conservative government did: it did not demonstrate sound financial literacy. As I just said, it is not a good idea to make massive budget cuts in government investments and have monumental job losses in the public sector when the economy is weak and the global economic system is very fragile. That too is not a good idea.

In conclusion, in terms of the mark that the bill deserves, it got 1 of the recommendations out of 30 half right, so is one-half of one out of 30, which is a failure. Also, in terms of the three subjects for a financial literacy class 101, which I recommended for the government, it fails on all three.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I always listen with attention and sometimes amusement to my friend across the way who has a self-exalted position of being the financial guru of the western world.

It is easy to run a surplus when one has unlimited powers of confiscation and taxation. In bragging about the $13 billion surplus, I would remind the hon. member that it was courtesy of the $60 billion confiscated from pension funds for the public service, RCMP and the Canadian Forces, and another $50 billion confiscated from the EI fund. It does not take a financial genius to run a surplus with that kind of power.

Has the hon. member understood or listened to any of the people around the world whose main comment, when talking about Canada and the strength of the Canadian economy and its unemployment and employment situation, is they wish they were in fact in Canada?

I know we can never come up to the hon. member's self-exalted standards, but will he admit that financial literacy is important and that any step in that direction is valuable, whether it comes up to his marvellous standards or not?

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I consider myself a relatively modest person. I am not claiming exalted status.

In response to his question, may I remind the member that the two main reasons for Canada's relatively strong position are both thanks to the Liberal governments of Paul Martin and Jean Chrétien. When we came into power in 1993, we inherited a $42 billion Conservative deficit. In relative terms, that was much bigger in those days than it would be today. We got rid of that deficit pretty fast. We paid down debt. That is why, instead of inheriting a $42 billion deficit from us, as we did, the Conservatives inherited a $13 billion surplus and then blew it.

Also, we saved the banks because we refused to deregulate. Those guys over there wanted to go all the way to bank deregulation. That would have been a disaster.

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

Mr. Speaker, I, too, note that the one-half recommendation of the financial literacy report in the bill is the appointment of yet another civil servant to oversee something. We are not exactly sure what, except to collaborate and coordinate activities with unknown stakeholders. Many other recommendations having to do with financial literacy have apparently been completely ignored by the government, such as training people, actually including it in school programs and including it as a skill that is required of the federal government.

What does the member say to all of the things that are missing from the legislation that makes it very difficult for anyone to support it, if this is all we are going to get?

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I certainly agree with the spirit of what my colleague is saying. The only way I can explain a bill that contains virtually nothing is that the Conservatives did it at the last minute. Maybe they thought that since next month would be financial literacy month, they had better have an announcement, so they decided to make a bill. It has a bill that says one person who will report not to the minister, as the commission suggested, but to someone else. They have nothing on the 29 recommendations, many of which make a whole lot of sense.

We are left knowing essentially nothing about whether the person in this job would actually carry out those recommendations or not, or whether as I said earlier, $1 million, or $100 million or $100,000 would be spent. We know virtually nothing and I can only conclude that the bill must have been written on the back of an envelope to prepare for an announcement in financial literacy week.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Speaker, I enjoyed my colleague's remarks and the facts that he laid out and how he indicated that maybe the finance minister should take financial literacy 101. He is the biggest spending finance minister with the biggest deficit in Canadian history with more wasted money during the last couple of years, everything from gazebos to whatever, with no open tendering in terms of the F-35s and the list goes on and on. I agree with the member's comment.

Is this just another bill of smoke and mirrors, which we see so often from the government, where it tries to allege it is really doing something, when in effect it is doing nothing? One thing that is clear in the bill is the appointment of another person. We have several boards with patronage appointments where the appointees are virtually doing nothing but spending money.

Is this really another bill in which the government will try to message that it is doing something when it really is not?

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his very convincing preamble. There is a risk that he is right, that we might just be creating yet another empty office. Remember other cases where new jobs were created but never filled, so taxpayers would be spending millions of dollars on an office that was empty and not doing anything.

There is a risk of this, especially when we are told nothing about the mission, the parameters around this or the number of employees. There is a real risk that the government is trying to create the impression of activity using at least some taxpayer money and potentially creating nothing.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Cooperation]

Mr. Speaker, we could spend the afternoon poking accusations across the floor. There are $40 million still unaccounted for under Liberal budgets. I am sure Canadians would like to know that.

I would like to get back to the essence of what the legislation tries to do. I have two daughters, both successful young ladies. My hope is they will be financially successful and understand the mechanisms available to them to make wise choices with their money, to be educated about those opportunities and to have the opportunity to invest their money to create their own futures.

Because much of what my colleague said earlier rests with the provinces, because of a curriculum for schooling being a provincial responsibility, does he have any suggestions for the government as to how we might work with those partners to ensure that the financial portion of this education could be included in perhaps high schools or in college education? Does he have any suggestions for the government to work on?

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, first, in relation to the member's earlier comments about her daughters, of course, we on this side agree that financial literacy is very important not only for her daughters but my children and all Canadians. There is a lack of it and a need for more.

Our question is not that. Our question is whether the bill would make any difference or whether the existing agencies, which I described in my speech, are doing the job. There might be duplication and it might not make the situation any better. Since the bill does not tell us anything about how many people or what the mandate would be, it is unclear to me what the answer should be.

Working with provincial governments to improve financial literacy, including in areas of provincial jurisdiction, through some sort of national committee might be a good idea, but there is no statement by the government in the bill as to whether that is involved or not. Its absence suggests it is not involved.

If the member is asking whether, in principle, a co-operative body involving different levels of government to address financial literacy in different areas involving both levels of government jurisdiction is a good idea, yes. However, if that is the case, why was it not in the bill?

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I welcome the opportunity to speak on this subject. I especially want to take the time to thank the member for Edmonton—Leduc, the chair of the finance committee, who was very instrumental in the initiation of this bill.

I understand why the member from the Liberal Party does not want this bill to go forward, a seriously co-operative bill resulting from working with the provinces and territories. The Liberal Party's idea of co-operation was to take $25 billion from the provinces back in the 1990s for social care, education and infrastructure.

As we know, when the Conservatives came to power, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities actually identified that there was a $123 billion deficit. The Liberals are the third party and they clearly indicated that the $123 billion deficit on infrastructure in the country was as a result of past practices of federal and provincial governments. For the most part, we all know why provincial governments could not invest in infrastructure. It was because $25 billion were taken by the previous federal Liberal government, of which the member was an active participant.

Before I continue, I would like to move the following motion. I move:

That this question be now put.

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

Mr. Speaker, having read the bill, I am curious as to how big the envelope was that the Conservative Party wrote this on. It seems to be very hastily and shabbily put together legislation that does not do justice to the report of the financial literacy task force, which made 30 recommendations, not 1, a report that had a great deal of depth and detail to provide a framework for financial literacy in Canada. We believe that framework for financial literacy is not met by this bill. The bill therefore is woefully lacking in detail, its objective, the mandate of the individual and in any of the other 29 recommendations made by the task force.

Where are the remaining 29 recommendations?

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to see this particular New Democratic member not criticize the issue as it relates to financial literacy, as the Liberal Party did previously. We all clearly know now that the global economic recession is causing significant problems in the world economy as a whole. That is a result of personal finances primarily and the inability of people to keep track of their personal finances and to be able to manage those properly. That is why this bill is so important.

However, before we start with the entire 30 recommendations, I would say it is just like picking a coach for a hockey team. Before one picks the entire team, one first picks the coach so that the coach can be part of the rest of the team. In this particular case, I would say that is exactly the issue, and I hope that answers the member's question.

If people do not know that, though, I would point out that this particular bill deals with the importance of having tools and knowledge so that Canadians will be able to make responsible financial decisions for their future. Clearly, our belief as a government is that Canada's future is based on Canadians as a whole and their success depends on their own good management decisions, and we are going to help them with those decisions.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Speaker, I am a little surprised by the motion that the question be now put. Just as we were starting to really get into the meat of the bill and to find out what was wrong with it, the government found another way of invoking closure, shutting down debate so that questions could not be asked on this bill.

I would suggest that this bill is really a shell with no meat in it, other than to perhaps appoint someone else in a patronage appointment and leave the impression that the government is doing something about financial literacy when it is not.

Financial literacy is important; we know that and we agree with it. The problem and the question that we need answers for, which the member is now trying to shut off debate about, is that the bill really does nothing to add to the tool chest of recommendations that a former member talked about and to actually exercise financial literacy and get that job done.

Could the member answer two questions? Why is he in a roundabout way trying to invoke another method of closure and shut down debate? Could he also tell me what else is in this bill from his perspective, because I do not see it, other than making another appointment and spending money without providing the tools to do the job?

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I always find it amusing when the member for Malpeque stands on his feet because, of course, I am from western Canada and that particular member wants to make it legal to sell marijuana but wants to keep it illegal to sell wheat. I have always found that to be interesting from that member's perspective.

I am not going to take any lessons from that particular member who was part of a government that cut $25 billion in social transfers to the provinces and, certainly, I am not going to take his expertise—

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

What about the $40 billion health transfer? Do you remember that?

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad he brought up the amount of $40 million, as I think I heard, because that is still what is missing as a result of the sponsorship scandal of a government he was a member of at the time. I am not going to take lessons from him.

However, we have a government with a Minister of Finance who is the number one finance minister in the world. We have a country that is the best off of any country in the world, and that is under the leadership of this Prime Minister, this Minister of Finance and this cabinet. We do not need to take lessons from someone who left us far behind and left the provinces far behind. We are going to move forward with a government and a cabinet that shows leadership in the world and clearly has a strong economy for Canadians.

[Raymond Côté, NDP, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we can say a number of things about this bill, things that the hon. member is unfortunately incapable of saying. There is a reason that he insists on cutting off debates.

The bill talks about financial literacy, but the reality is that it contains no definition. The government does not even care about finding out what it is. There is no accountability mechanism for the financial literacy leader, and there are no initiatives to increase financial literacy itself.

I really wonder where we are going with this. Frankly, we are going to provide Canadians with a fake institution, with a puppet that will not even be able to help them. What is that? It is a waste of public money and an abuse of the trust of all Canadians.

I would like to ask the hon. member to reassure me on another matter. With the government in such a rush, does it at least have a financial literacy marketing plan for its puppet in order to improve the government's image? I even worry about that.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I could not help but snicker when the member talked about this government wasting money, because nothing could be further from the truth. An NDP member suggesting that a Conservative government would waste money is bizarre indeed.

We know that many of these initiatives are currently under way in Canada and have been for some time. In fact, some things are taking place in high schools across this country with web-based systems.

Clearly, the task force that launched public consultations with Canadians in February 2010, with its over 17 sessions in 15 communities across this country, did receive input from Canadians.

We are not starting off from ground zero. We clearly know what caused the global economic recession. We clearly understand that we have to help Canadians educate themselves on how to move forward with their own personal finances and how to be more successful, so that we can continue to have that leadership position in the world not only as a government that is keeping a strong country and keeping Canadians safe, but also as a country that continues to enjoy an excellent quality of life, second to no one else in the world. Canadians can do that by being educated with our help.

[Ève Péclet, NDP, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Mr. Speaker, what the hon. member is saying is very interesting. But public funds were spent to create this task force, whose membership was widely criticized by Canadians. With this government, that does not surprise me at all. But, most of all, after spending taxpayers' money and taking time, the government is accepting only one of the task force's recommendations. Is that really going to help people who need to learn about this, people likely with low incomes, who pay no taxes and so will not be able to take advantage of the tax credits? They say that the NDP spends taxpayers' money for nothing, but here we have taxpayers' money being spent on a job that has not been done.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I hope we never get to see what an NDP government could do with public funds. It would be pretty embarrassing indeed.

The proposed amendments to the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada Act aim to establish the financial literacy leader within the agency. There is already an agency involved. It is a key step in addressing the task force's recommendations.

However, the difference between our government and a potential NDP government is not just that our government would not waste taxpayers' money on wishes and wants, but also that the NDP or the Liberals would impose what they wanted, what its leadership wanted, on Canadians instead of listening to Canadians as we are doing with this legislation. We are going to appoint a coach, someone who can listen to Canadians, someone who can understand and work with stakeholders and other agencies across Canada, including financial experts.

We are going to listen to them and then bring forward legislation based on stakeholders' best wants and desires in the best interests of Canadians.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Winnipeg North, aboriginal affairs; the hon. member for Montcalm, persons with disabilities; and the hon. member for Brome—Missisquoi, the firearms registry.

[Tarik Brahmi, NDP, Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to start off by responding to the hon. member for Fort McMurray—Athabasca. In light of the events we are currently seeing, he should not be so confident because he might be disappointed in the next election if he ends up in the opposition.

I would like to speak to Bill C-28 as the deputy critic for consumer protection. I would first like to criticize the parliamentary manoeuvre that we have just witnessed, which sought, once again, to reduce the time allotted to the opposition members so that they do not have an opportunity to point out the shortcomings and flaws in the bill. The Conservatives use this method constantly, and it is our duty to denounce it.

This bill has a number of obvious flaws. The first one that jumps out is that the financial literacy leader will not be required to be bilingual. Being bilingual does not just mean knowing a few words in French or being able to read a few documents in French. Being bilingual also means being able to explain provisions, to present choices, to listen and to meet with people across Canada, especially in provinces with francophones, not just Quebeckers.

Hon. members from Quebec and from other francophone regions in Canada and I myself, as the member for Saint-Jean, want first to know where in the bill is the provision that ensures that the financial literacy leader is capable of communicating in both languages correctly, using decent French, and is capable of putting himself at the level of the people he intends to serve.

Above all, I do not want to hear the government say that we should not worry because, once he is appointed, the leader will take French courses, which is what we have been hearing over the past few months in the House. The government claims that it is possible to learn French and that there is no need to worry. No. That is not true. It takes years, it takes skills and a will to learn a foreign language. So that is an obvious flaw in the bill. That goes against the bilingualism requirements of this country and against Canada's will to stay bilingual and able to serve all its people in both official languages.

Now, let us talk a bit about financial literacy programs. Their goals are often criticized. We know that, more often than not, these programs are not intended to give consumers the tools that will enable them to pay fewer fees and have more control over their expenses. Instead, they are used by large financial institutions—banks and insurance companies—to gain more clients who will spend more money.

One of the things that should grab our attention about the famous task force on financial literacy is who is on it. It has 13 members. Don Stewart, the CEO of Sun Life Financial, is the chair of the group, and his vice-chair is Jacques Ménard, the chairman of BMO Nesbitt Burns and the president of BMO Financial Group Quebec. The very make-up of this task force should give us an indication of its objectives. The recommendations clearly show that they are basically designed to help financial institutions boost their clientele, obtain more clients. They do not aim to give consumers the ability to manage their money better and save by using what banks or financial organizations have to offer.

This is an important element. This is the make-up of the famous task force. Beyond that are the recommendations. This task force issued 30 recommendations, from which the government has plucked only one. The only one it took was the first, which involves appointing a financial literacy leader. It is too bad, because the second recommendation was much more worthwhile. It focused on creating a task force, an advisory board, that would give the leader direction and would have control over the actions of this financial literacy leader. So the task force would lend the financial literacy leader greater legitimacy because he would be accountable. This is an important part that this government ignored, intentionally in my opinion, because it is the second recommendation. It is not some subsidiary recommendation tucked away at the end of the document; it is truly the second recommendation.

Another aspect of this legislation is that it attempts to lay a guilt trip on consumers by claiming that they are not competent enough to properly manage their money. But it is absurd to try and educate consumers about how to save money when they do not have any. That is the main problem: consumers, currently, do not have money and, therefore, do not have the ability to save. They can be taught as many strategies as possible, but when the average family is indebted to the tune of over 150% of their income, in other words, the equivalent of half of their income in debt, how can this family of average consumers save money when they do not even have the means to pay off their debts? What is most striking about this legislation is that it does not deal with the problem, but with the consequence, the consequence being that now that consumers are in debt, we are going to explain to them how to avoid going further into debt.

A French comedian once said: “Write to us and tell us what you need, and we will explain to you how to make do without it.” That is this government's logic: do not create ways to help consumers; instead, explain to them, after the fact, how to get out of their predicament.

Another very interesting aspect of this report is that it confuses a complement and a substitute. Indeed, what we call financial literacy, which is also known as “financial education” or “financial knowledge”, must complement any government measures to assist consumers. It must not be a substitute.

A very interesting report was published in 2009 by the OECD and is entitled “Financial Literacy and Consumer Protection: Overlooked Aspects of the Crisis”. This report was prepared by the OECD following the financial crisis in order to demonstrate that the fact that consumers had started to use increasingly complex financial mechanisms that they did not understand jeopardized not only consumers' financial security, but the financial security of the whole system. Moreover, this very interesting report states that some recent financial innovations are incomprehensible not only to consumers, but also to bankers themselves.

One of the things mentioned was floating interest rate loans. When the time comes to choose between a floating rate and a fixed rate loan, most consumers are unable to understand the difference between them and how their choice will affect their future indebtedness. And yet, they are the ones who make the choice.

Subprime mortgage loans were what caused a crisis that had never been seen before, mainly in the United States. Why? Because consumers were given the opportunity to get involved in innovative mechanisms that were different from traditional financing mechanisms. The end result was that their own financial health as consumers was endangered, as well as the financial health of the whole system. As it happens, the whole system collapsed because some little financial geniuses devised instruments that are very difficult to understand.

If most people who work in the field of finance cannot understand them, how can the average consumer avoid being confused? The very interesting OECD report stated that most consumers greatly overestimate their financial skills. Here is a personal example. In a previous life, I was in charge of a team that conducted social population surveys for Statistics Canada. One of the projects was to evaluate the literacy and numeracy of the people being surveyed.

The results of these surveys were disastrous. Not only that, but what does not show clearly in these studies is that most people who are unable to respond will not respond, because they are ashamed. Quite simply, people who are unable to add or subtract will not participate in these studies. This means that the pool of respondents is biased from the very outset. When the sample is biased at the outset because those who are not capable of responding are ashamed of taking part in the study, then the results clearly do not reflect just how disastrously uninformed most consumers are.

This proposal is meaningless not because it would be impossible to do something worthwhile with it, but because the government has decided to blame indebtedness on consumers, households and families who find themselves unable to control their spending because they do not have enough money, rather than take action that would truly enable consumers to first get themselves out of debt and perhaps then set money aside for the future.

Unlike the Conservatives, who think that education and financial literacy are substitutes for programs, the NDP proposed concrete measures in our election platform in May 2011. For instance, we proposed—and it was our leader, the late Jack Layton, who drew attention to this—capping interest rates at 5% above prime, which is based on the Bank of Canada's key interest rate. The NDP proposed this concrete measure, which would give all Canadian families who are struggling with record debt levels—that is what Statistics Canada is reporting—a little breathing room and hope that they will one day get out of debt.

One interesting thing that came out of the 30 recommendations in the task force's report was this: “the Government of Canada...integrate a financial literacy component into the Canada student loans program for students receiving funding.” Helping students, most of whom have a lot of debt, would be very beneficial. This report recommends that the Government of Canada integrate programs, concrete measures to help students manage and deal with their level of debt, which can be huge. That is recommendation number 10 in the report. But where is that recommendation in the bill before us today? It is missing. Why is the government ignoring things that could help change the lives of consumers?

Instead, the Conservatives prefer to create a very well-paid executive position, but they will not even give that individual an advisory board to make recommendations and give the position some legitimacy. Of the 30 recommendations, the Conservatives took only one, and they drafted a bill that is nothing but a smokescreen. That is how I would describe it.

In closing, the NDP will not be supporting this bill, because we believe we can do better. The resources that resulted from the deliberations of the task force—even though it seems to favour the financial institutions—could be put to better use. We cannot support this bill today.

[Christine Moore, NDP, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Speaker, as many of us know, there is a major movement against tuition hikes in Quebec. Student debt is also a hot topic of debate. Could my colleague tell us what would be more effective than this bill when it comes to helping students improve their financial literacy and reaching them for that purpose?

[Tarik Brahmi, NDP, Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Abitibi—Témiscamingue for her question. There is a problem in Quebec. The younger generation does not understand that previous generations had certain privileges, such as no tuition hikes. The younger generation is also asking for help to get out of this situation.

The NDP suggested increasing federal transfers to the provinces to help the provincial governments increase loans and bursaries. That was the principal measure in our platform, because the federal government cannot meddle in the provincial management of loans and bursaries.

[Ève Péclet, NDP, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like my colleague to comment on two things. First, most government tax credits will not benefit those most in need. There is a disconnect. We are going to help people better understand the system and make good decisions. And yet, those most in need, those targeted by these measures, will not even be able to take advantage of tax credits. Their income is so low that they do not pay tax.

Would it not be smarter for the government to start by helping people find a job and pay taxes instead of spending public money to put together a group that is totally useless and whose recommendations will not even be put into action?

[Tarik Brahmi, NDP, Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for La Pointe-de-l'Île. That is a very good question.

The non-refundable tax credits are just more smokescreens. Most of the time, non-refundable tax credits are used for making announcements so that the government can say it provides tax credits. That being said, as the hon. member pointed out so well, these tax credits do not benefit the people who need them the most.

For example, in the NDP platform, financial institutions would be required to lower their transaction fees, since we know that the cost of transactions is practically nil. The infrastructure carries a certain cost, but every individual or additional financial operation costs nothing. Those are indeed the measures that the NDP has proposed. They are concrete measures and not smokescreens, as my colleague was saying when she was talking about non-refundable tax credits.

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

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my colleague's comments on this apparent attempt at a bill. When I read it, I could not find anything captivating in it. However, having read the recommendations from the task force, I realized that the bill was smoke and mirrors to try to keep what we really need out of the legislative agenda of the government. What we really need are these recommendations.

A number of individuals in my riding could really use some financial literacy when it comes to their daily banking and their ability to exchange their cheques for money. We have payday loan companies that operate with a 1,000% interest but there is nothing in the bill that talks about how we would put those payday loan companies out of business, which is what we should be aiming at. We should be aiming at financial literacy in a way that helps the poorest of the poor in this country but the bill does none of that.

Would my colleague like to comment further on that?

[Tarik Brahmi, NDP, Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is absolutely absurd to try to teach consumers how to save money that they do not have in the first place. That is the problem with the bill. It contains no measures to help consumers save money and to get more money in their pockets. Teaching people to save money that they do not have is useless.

[Christine Moore, NDP, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Speaker, another point in my colleague's speech that raises questions is that bilingualism is not a requirement for this new position. Since my colleague is bilingual, I would like to ask him his opinion on this. When a text is translated, a simple change in a modifier can completely change the meaning of the sentence. Financial documents are rather complex to understand.

If a person who does not speak French is analyzing a translated text or is trying to analyze a French text with only limited knowledge of the language, does this not pose the risk that the person will miss certain traps or aspects that are misleading to the consumer and that are found in the details?

[Tarik Brahmi, NDP, Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague is absolutely right. She identified one of the bill's major shortcomings: not only does it not require the financial literacy leader to be able to interpret very complex texts, it does not even require this person to have the vaguest idea of what the texts are about.

My colleague was absolutely right when she said that there can be subtleties in either language or in translation that might be missed by someone who understands just one of the two official languages.

[Jean Rousseau, NDP, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his excellent speech.

In his opinion, how can a segment of the population be educated about a very complex subject when their main concerns are the business of day-to-day living, providing enough food for their families, and solving truly essential survival problems? The gap between rich and poor is getting bigger, and as we all know, the poor are always less well educated than those who are better off. So there is also a problem with access to education. There are some things that the government always forgets, and now it wants to educate a segment of the population with extremely complex legislation.

Someone in my riding told me that if he called the government, the person answering the phone would not even be able to explain the legislation and what he should do about it.

Can my colleague explain why the government is determined to introduce hastily conceived bills without even considering the people these bills are for?

[Tarik Brahmi, NDP, Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Compton—Stanstead hit the nail right on the head. It is right there in black and white in the OECD report entitled “Financial Literacy and Consumer Protection: Overlooked Aspects of the Crisis”: “...consumers have low levels of financial literacy and often overestimate their skills, knowledge and awareness when it comes to credit products.” That sums up the situation nicely.

Consumers are being asked to be their own doctor and their own neurosurgeon. Average consumers cannot be expected to make informed decisions about such complex subjects. It is up to the government to implement measures that restrain financial institutions and prevent them from developing products that, though innovative, are impossible to understand and can trap people, such as subprime mortgages.

[Raymond Côté, NDP, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am going to share my precious time with the hon. member for Vaudreuil-Soulanges. This is another one of the government's tactics. It wastes the precious time of the servants of the people of Canada by limiting debate. It is very important to fully debate the meaning and consequences of Bill C-28.

I would like to start with what I could call my conclusion. It is extraordinary and unbelievable to see this government's stubbornness and its unwavering willingness to completely abandon the people of Canada to the forces of the market or what we might call the market to use classic economics terms. The word “abandon” is not too strong.

Some government members—self-professed libertarians—convey what seems to be a respectful message by saying that they are going to lower taxes and give people back their money because they know how to spend it. However, in reality, they are abandoning and letting people down. People have to deal with their own problems and, if they are not able to watch their own backs, then too bad for them. They will freeze to death. The government will be subject to more and more attacks in this regard. If it refuses to pay attention to this type of message and warning, the anger will continue to grow. This government should beware because it is facing hard times ahead, and I will be there to remind it of its turpitude. The word “abandon” could just be an empty word that I am throwing around, but it is not. It is supported by facts.

I am not going to repeat the eloquent speeches that my colleagues made about Bill C-28's shortcomings and problems. Instead, I would like to illustrate my point in a different way.

It is absolutely unbelievable that this government, which created total chaos by handing over the reins to the large financial institutions—banks, insurance companies and all sorts of investment companies—has the audacity to tell people that it is going to appoint an official who will give them all the documentation available, whether or not they are literate and whether or not they have the ability to understand the complex financial products that exist today. It is absolutely unbelievable. I can say this because my statements are based on real and substantiated facts.

The government is talking out of both sides of its mouth. On one hand, it is running a marketing ploy—yet another one—and, on the other, the budget is coming. The government will likely continue to announce useless little tax measures that are unnecessarily complex and that most taxpayers are unable to understand let alone use.

A number of months ago, a poll showed that half of all Canadians do not prepare their tax return themselves because it is too complicated. Preparing one's tax return is a duty that is as essential and as basic as voting. This government has no qualms about treating that with contempt, but it throws up its hands in horror and gets indignant about the revelations, each one based in fact, about problems during the recent election. We could probably go back to the beginning of the 2000s and find all kinds of completely dirty electoral tricks.

One out of every two Canadians is not even able to fulfill a basic requirement, preparing his income tax return, by himself. He has to rely on a family member or friend or pay a professional to do it. There is something really scandalous in that. I know, because one of the greatest gifts my father gave me when I was growing up was to make me prepare my tax return myself, to make an effort as a Canadian to do it myself and to understand what it represented. Now that I have a reasonable idea of what to do—and I will not hide the fact that it is still a decent challenge—I still do them for people close to me.

If I did not fill out their tax returns for them for free—we are talking about people who really do not have a lot of money, who earn less than $20,000 a year—they would be paying a professional accountant $25 or $30 an hour to do it. They do not even have a high enough income to claim tax credits, like that darned public transit credit, for example. I know, I see it, I fill out their tax returns. It is a sham of a tax credit, it is totally useless, and it does absolutely nothing to help our cities develop their public transit systems. The people whose tax returns I fill out have nowhere near the resources to qualify for it.

This government is just laughing in the face of most Canadians. That is the reality. Bill C-28 is another insult to Canadians everywhere. I am as comfortable with it as I am watching hon. members with their noses stuck in their papers or their computers and pretending not to listen to me. It is really extraordinary. We are here debating the future of our fellow Canadians, debating the fact that they are going to be buried in documents, which they will only half understand. They will be the victims of all kinds of tricks. There is no need to go looking for very complex financial products.

I recently had to shop for a credit card that would give me additional benefits. In connection with that, an expert showed me that credit cards with points and bonus systems are an excellent trick to attract a clientele that will be eager to use the cards again and again, which then increases their level of spending. One explanation for the famous household debt in Canada is this type of credit card, and that is just one example. When we visit the website of any Canadian bank, not to mention the astronomical number of offers we get in our mailboxes for new and supposedly exceptional cards, we cannot help but notice the extraordinary number of cards offering all kinds of incredible advantages, with all kinds of different fees and totally different interest rates.

Even the experts can get confused. One of my colleagues talked about this and he is absolutely right. It is complicated. Given that the government does not put a cap on this type of bloat, which is completely useless and counterproductive, except for the institutions that benefit greatly from it, to the detriment of the most vulnerable, it is basically using Bill C-28 to tell the Canadian population to take a hike. It is truly outrageous.

I can no longer stand watching this government pose as the poor victim when it has a majority and, in addition, use every possible means to shut us up, when we are defending true Canadian values and all of our fellow citizens. The government should not be surprised if we systematically refuse, for all its bills, to be truly complicit in immoral and, ultimately, almost criminal actions.

Before I get carried away, I will leave it at that. I think I have made my point.

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

Mr. Speaker, I listened to my colleague's comments which I found to be erudite, a word that maybe is known to members on the other side of the House.

As far as we can tell, this bill has not done the job that needs to be done for most Canadians. I am talking about Canadians who are not in the upper echelons of the 1%, shall we say. I am talking about people who may need some financial literacy but they are managing money that most of the people we represent could not dream of. The financial literacy that is necessary is not being provided.

There is no definition of what financial literacy is, for one thing. There is no indication of a mandate or what the goal of the individual would be. The person would spend a considerable sum of government money, we assume, because he or she is not going to work for nothing. The person would need an office and staff and may need some language training.

What is missing from this bill? What is it that we would be considering if we were to present this bill?

[Raymond Côté, NDP, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for his question and comments. Actually, he has really hit the nail on the head. From the outset, this bill introduces a position that does not have a really defined objective. The so-called financial literacy leader has no goal to achieve and no obligation to be accountable.

Those are basic principles that should be in any bill worthy of the name. The fact that the government introduced this type of bill is simply a joke.

Of course, I would like to tell the hon. member that the New Democratic Party has no greater duty than to say that it agrees and that something of the kind can always be considered. However, before planning to create a new position, we would look at what is already in place. And let me point out that there is already an organization that takes care of financial literacy.

If we ever needed something else, we would set goals, but we would first look at what is already up and running, what are the strengths and weaknesses, in order to support what is being done right now. There are resources already available and the government chooses to ignore them.

[Claude Gravelle, NDP, Nickel Belt, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have examined the bill several times. The only thing I see is that it will give one person a job, but it will not help people generally.

I would like to know if my colleague can see how this bill will help ordinary Canadians.

[Raymond Côté, NDP, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague from Nickel Belt, because that is a very pertinent question. He would not believe how pertinent it is.

In addition to creating a somewhat phoney position—perhaps my interpretation is a bit harsh; I will let God be the judge of that—I think the main objective of this bill is to serve the government's fondness for self-promotion. The bill is so devoid of any substance that, apart from forming the foundation of a marketing ploy, like other monumental projects the government has developed for its own self-glorification, I really do not see how this could help ordinary Canadians in any way. That is what is utterly shameful. The government is going to waste public money not only to create the position, but also, no doubt, to launch a multi-million dollar ad campaign to tell us how wonderful the government is for creating this position, which will basically be useless.

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

Mr. Speaker, I will start off by looking at the problems the national task force on financial literacy had from the very beginning.

First, it was headed by a former banker. I have nothing against bankers. My mother was a banker. She worked as a bank manager for the Bank of Montreal for over 35 years. She worked in human resources. I had an aunt who worked for the Bank of Montreal for the same period of time. My mom's friends worked for a bank. I am familiar with bankers and I have no problem with them.

The raison d'être of bankers is to market financial products. I know this because I lived in a banking family. Bankers sell financial products. There are certain marketing seasons when they sell RRSPs or different financial products. They have quotas. There are things that they have to sell. They are salespeople. That is their raison d'être. Often the financial products that they sell to consumers increase the profits of their institutions.

That is not a balanced way to start a group dedicated to the idea of financial literacy. It is similar to putting McDonald's in charge of nutrition policies. It is not a balanced way to do things.

Members know as well as I do that consumers sometimes get burned by financial products because they do not quite understand them. A case in point is the RESP.

I want to make a transparent declaration to the House. When I was in my early thirties and took out an RESP for my daughter, I did not quite understand what I was getting into. The marketing material made it look like I could squirrel away money for my daughter and by the time she was 18 there would be enough money for her university education. I was conscious of the fact that when she did reach university age it would be quite expensive to put her through post-secondary education with the rising costs of education and the rising costs of living. I was really scared and I wanted to find a financial product that would allow me to pay for her education without any worries.

What I did not know was that I could lose that money easily. Call me a fool, but I did not know that the RESP would lose so much money when the market took a dive. My mother the banker did not tell me that fact either until I had lost half the value during the downturn in 2008. There was $12,000 in that plan and it went down to about $5,000 or $6,000. I worked hard to put that money aside. I believed that I was doing the right thing. The bank told me I was doing the right thing. The government told me I was doing the right thing. I believed them.

What we need in terms of financial literacy is somebody who will tell the people of Canada the whole truth, not just the marketing truth.

The Minister of Finance denied that we were in a downturn until the very end of 2008, but I felt it much earlier. I remember the government initiatives to boost people's contributions to RESPs in 2006 and 2007. There was quite a marketing drive by the banks and government. They were telling people to put their money into RESPs so that their kids could go to school.

I am sure people will say that I was a fool not to know how it worked before I put my money in the RESP. With raising a child, working full-time, taking care of my family, I did not have the time to sit down and look at what the RESP was about. It was never taught to me in high school. It was never taught to me in university. I was to teach myself from the bank's own marketing products and from the government literature. None of those things told me that I could lose my money just like that.

I know I am not alone in that. I know there are plenty of Canadians out there who have gone through similar experiences to me. Therefore, as much as we might say that I am a fool, if I am a fool, thousands of Canadians are fools. They need help understanding these financial products.

Francophones may find it even more difficult to learn about these financial products through this group because bilingualism is not a requirement for the position of financial literacy leader. Obviously, what the government wants to do is create a single consumer protection agency. However, that is not really within the purview of this bill. Consumer protection is not really included in the bill.

Instead, I would like to talk about one of the greatest problems for Canadians: savings.

If we are looking at the issue of financial literacy, I must agree with my colleague in the third party who said that the financial leader of the government was not quite literate, because we have serious problems. One of those serious problems is the savings of Canadians and it is one of the things that is effecting the competitiveness of our economy.

The former governor of the Bank of Canada said, in a report quite a while ago, that Canadians needed to save more. He said that they needed to save between 10% and 21% of their pre-tax income each year and that they needed to save consistently for 35 years to have comfortable retirement incomes.

According to a report prepared by the C.D. Howe Institute, which is not exactly a socialist organization, people who earn between $42,000 a year and $150,000 a year need to save between 11% and 21%.

What I see in Bill C-28 is the creation of a group that will try to market financial products, like credit cards, RRSPs and RESPs, without fully explaining what those products do or explaining it in a way that will promote those products to promote the profits of those institutions and banks. I do not think that is the way to teach Canadians how to be financially literate. We need to find a way for Canadians to save more money.

The Conference Board of Canada, looking at the World Economic Forum's 2011 report on competitiveness, said that Canada's macroeconomic environment rankings were weak. It said that a number of fiscal pressures were restricting Canada's economy from achieving its full potential. For example, Canada ranked 80th in terms of its gross national savings as a percentage of GDP and a lowly 129th out of 142 countries in terms of its overall government debt levels as a percentage of GDP.

It is clear that we need to help Canadians become financially literate but that starts with telling them to save more and finding efficient ways for them to save without marketing these financial products to them. I do not think the task force would be able to sufficiently explain these financial products to Canadians when it is obvious that the composition of the board would be compromised in that it would not be necessary for the head of the task force to be bilingual.

I have problems with the bill. I do not think it would do what the government states it would do, which is increase financial literacy. We need to take a serious look at how we can actually improve the financial literacy of Canadians. Looking at the statistics, I can see that we have a long way to go.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague said something toward the end of his speech, which I hope I did not hear correctly. Was the member saying that the financial literacy leader and his or her office would be marketing and selling products to Canadians?

Clearly, that is ridiculous. That is not the job or the mandate of that person or that office. That is done by financial institutions, by people who have the expertise. He explained that he had some problems with his RESP, which is too bad, but, having been in the business for a number of years, a good financial advisor is essential.

Could the member clarify whether he thinks that this office would actually be marketing and selling products?

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

Mr. Speaker, no. What I was implying was that, because of the composition of the working group being mostly former bankers, having their raison d'être for their careers the marketing of financial products, they would be amenable to not fully explaining these products.

I was not implying that they would be selling these products. However, they will have done that in their careers, that will be what they know and it will not be in their interests to steer Canadians away from products that might not give the results their former institutions promised in the past.

[Claude Gravelle, NDP, Nickel Belt, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I commend my colleague from Vaudreuil—Soulanges for his excellent speech. During his speech he mentioned the word “fool” a couple of times. I certainly would not call him a fool but I would call this bill a foolish bill.

He also talked about poverty and about trying to save for RRSPs. I know that is very difficult. I know a lot of seniors are living in poverty right now because when they were raising their kids they could not put money aside for their retirement.

Would it not have been a better idea if the government had invested in the Canada-Quebec pension plan to help people, especially seniors, who are living in poverty?

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

Mr. Speaker, I do believe that if we were to invest more in our CPP and QPP, if we were to beef that up, Canadians would find more money at the end of their careers when they retire.

I mentioned that my mother worked for over 30 years for the Bank of Montreal and believed in all the financial products that she sold. She was quite a fan. However, in her retirement now, I am helping her out with the day to day, simply because she could not save enough money during her career, even with all the financial products that she used, for her retirement.

[Raymond Côté, NDP, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my colleague from Vaudreuil-Soulanges for making his speech very relevant. I would also like to reassure him right away. Although he had an unfortunate experience with his RESP, he is not less intelligent than the average person. Mr. Rousseau, the former CEO of the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec and a former CEO of the Laurentian Bank, also admitted that he does not understand the ultra-sophisticated savings products that led to the 2008 crisis.

Now the government is introducing a defined contribution pension plan, which also has pitfalls similar to those of the product central to my colleague's unfortunate experience. What does he think of the government's ability to assess financial literacy? Is it qualified to do so?

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for the question. When I spoke candidly, I heard someone on the government side say that they could see why I had lost my money. That says a lot about the government's attitude. It is saying that if we lose our money and are poor, it is our own fault. The government will carry on with its agenda. It will make one group of people rich and not care about the rest. That is completely unacceptable. We must protect both the poor and the rich of this country.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

Resuming debate. The hon. member for Abitibi—Témiscamingue has six minutes remaining.

[Christine Moore, NDP, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we cannot talk about this bill without a clear understanding of what happened in the beginning. In budget 2009, the Minister of Finance created a national task force that was mandated to provide the minister with advice on the issue of financial literacy. So the group went to work. It was made up of various stakeholders from different sectors, including workers, volunteers and teachers, as well as people from the business and financial sectors.

The task force submitted a report containing 30 recommendations. One recommendation was to create the position of financial literacy leader. This bill completely disregards all the other recommendations. To me, that does not make any sense. The report gave 30 recommendations and the government adopted only one of them.

Furthermore, this bill could have described very concrete measures. For instance, one of the recommendations was this:

The task force recommends that the Government of Canada, as part of the 2011–12 renewal of its urban aboriginal strategy...make financial literacy training programs for young aboriginal Canadians eligible for funding.

This could have been a concrete recommendation in terms of financial literacy and it could have helped. We all know that aboriginal youth and aboriginal communities have problems stemming from poverty.

Often, one of the problems, when we talk about financial literacy, is that they do not understand the terms accurately. If someone needs to buy a car and does not understand the actual terms of their loan, they go into debt and go bankrupt. If they use a credit card to buy food, but they do not have a good grasp on financial literacy, they have the impression they are paying 10% interest when really it is 28%, because sometimes the advertising is hard to understand. I think help is not being given.

So this is a community that could have been targeted for this. The task force also recommended that the government of Canada provide recent immigrants with financial information and education services tailored to their needs, as part of the orientation services offered both abroad and in Canada by the Immigrant Settlement and Adaptation Program and the language instruction for newcomers to Canada. So this is another group that could have been targeted, but that has absolutely ignored. Those recommendations are not taken into account in the bill.

Some of these immigrants are coming from countries like Africa where, and I apologize for the expression, about 1% of the population has a credit card and a debit card and where bartering is still done with food and that sort of thing. They also use cash, but they still use the barter system. They find themselves in Canada, with a system that involves handling a mountain of paperwork and where they may not understand the language very well. They may not have a significant level of education, and they find themselves in this kind of system and having to manage to understand. They have to understand an income tax system, which is entirely new to them.

The government is choosing to target only the financial literacy leader, instead of applying a recommendation like that one, which could have been more concrete. I do not understand the priorities; it is impossible to understand. When they have 30 excellent recommendations and they choose not to pay attention to them, that seems to me to be rather unusual.

The possibility was also recommended of working side-by-side with provincial and territorial governments in order to provide teachers with the tools they need to teach financial literacy to children and to their students. If financial literacy is taught gradually and in a language that is familiar to children, teenagers, college and university students, there is a chance that they will understand it. That could, therefore, be the way forward. It could facilitate a beneficial exchange between provinces, so that teachers are able to teach the material and have the tools they need at their disposal, instead of having to invent them. That was another recommendation.

It was also recommended that employers be able to offer financial literacy training, so that their employees fully understand, for example, their pension programs and the importance of investing in an RRSP. But this recommendation has not been followed. That strikes me as incomprehensible. In my opinion, budgets and key recommendations should have been the focus of this bill.

Granted, the bill creates the position of financial literacy leader, but it is just as essential ti implement the key recommendations, and it is crucial, as of now, to take into account these recommendations, and that things do not drag on. Otherwise, the work of the task force will largely fall short of its objective.

In my opinion, this smacks of a lack of logic and a failure to adequately prioritize. Positions should not be created without prior knowledge of the objectives, without knowing how to proceed, and what the priorities are for implementation. There needs to be some direction when that kind of position is created, otherwise it is tantamount to sending a cheque to a senior official who is acting rudderlessly.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

It being 5:30 p.m., the House will now proceed to the consideration of private members' business as listed on today's order paper.

The House resumed from March 1 consideration of the motion that Bill C-28, An Act to amend the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee, and of the motion that this question be now put.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it is with pleasure that I participate in the debate on this bill in the sense that financial issues are something which all Canadians are concerned about. The direction in which the government is going and the sense of commitment in terms of education on financial matters are something that we should all have concerns about.

It was not long ago when the U.S. took a nosedive. Many economists did their best in trying to explain the circumstances that led to it. When I reflect on the discussions that I had with constituents from, at that time, Inkster, but all residents of Winnipeg North, many of those discussions pertained to what we thought had taken place that caused the American economy to take that radical turn. As people will recall, the price of housing dropped quite dramatically in certain areas of the United States and there was a great deal of speculation as to why. Many individuals sat around the table in discussion groups and we talked about the American debt, loans and mortgages, and the way in which housing was being financed in the U.S. I raise that because there is a general need for us to appreciate how important it is that the population as a whole has a sense of how finances are administered, both at the micro-level and the macro-level.

There was a time when going through school we had a basic economics class and that was it. There was nothing more to trying to understand finances. Today, depending on the high school one goes to or even in elementary schools, we are starting to see more interest and education in that field. That is something which we think is a good thing because the economy and the way in which we manage our financial affairs is so important. If we look at the types of decisions we need to make, the better informed and educated the population is on financial matters it is at the end of the day better for government.

An example for which people could get a good sense of an appreciation is the issue of retirement. The amount of financial planning to be considered for retirement is significant. When I was a bit younger, 25 years ago or so, first getting elected when I was 26, a pension was not an issue for me personally. I never thought about pensions. There were other bigger, broader pictures that I wanted to think about, at least at that stage in my life, and I think many of my peers would have thought likewise. When we are 25, we are not thinking of retirement but it is critically important for us to be thinking about that. Upon reflection and with hindsight, there are a number of things that I would have done differently.

We need to look at the role that government needs to play from both the consumers' perspective and the government's perspective. We need to bring it to the government. The government appears to be on the brink of making a decision to reduce the benefits for old age supplement. People who are 55 years old today will not be able to retire when they hit 67.

If we go to that generation, many individuals in the workforce, some of it very labour intense and other aspects of it requiring people to work as lawyers or whatever it might be, planned on the 65 retirement age. Once people start hitting the age of 40 or 45, they start thinking more about retirement and then bank accordingly. People need to learn what it is they need to do in order to retire at age 65. There is that learning curve.

We need to recognize that there are hundreds of thousands of people who will be affected by the anticipated decision by the government to increase that age. As a result, it will have an impact on the finances of many Canadians across Canada as they will need to start reviewing what sort of retirement funds they will have. They reflect on their homes and where they are investing their moneys today. A lot of people are on fairly tight budgets but they know they will need to increase their RRSPs if they still want to retire at age 65 to bridge the gap between 65 and 67, something we hear a great deal about from the government. People may not necessarily have the same sort of cash flow as they once would have had or they may have allocated their disposable income and it will be difficult for them to generate the type of resources they will require in order to continue with their plans to retire at age 65. There are many different options for people to be exploring at a younger age. That is just one component.

To bring it around to housing, people need to have a good understanding of the housing market and how it relates compared to mortgage rates. It was not that long ago, in the late 1970s, when there were skyrocketing mortgage rates on homes. It was in and around 18% or 19%. We can talk about a relatively small amount of money being financed in order to own a home, but when it is rated at somewhere around 18% or 19%, it takes away a good chunk of a person's disposable income.

Over the last 20 years, if we look at interest rates, they have been considerably better than what they were during the 1970s. As a result, more middle-class Canadians are buying homes that cost $250,000 or $300,000 and they can afford it because interest rates are so low in comparison to the 1970s in particular, but also the 1980s. If the interest rate today were to go up two or three points, we can only imagine the profound impact that would have on thousands of families across Canada. When people finance homes for $300,000, it is often two people working in order to support their lifestyle in that house.

I have had opportunities to have discussions with individuals who are in that sort of situation. Their homes are their futures and they are literally banking on it. People get mortgages for 25 or 30 years nowadays with an interest rate of 4% or 5% and two individuals are working. We can only think of the impact if the interest rate were to go up by two points. They would not have the disposable income, for the most part, in order to address that.

There is a great deal of pressure, whether it is on the Bank of Canada or on the government, to be cognizant of the interest rate because of the impact it would have on consumers and their life savings. The home can be the single greatest expenditure that people have.

We could continue talking about other types of expenditures by consumers, individuals who go out and purchase large ticket items, such as vehicles. They are brought in, in good part, because of low interest rates.

When we talk about financial literacy, it is a disseminating of information that will ensure there is better overall education for all Canadians. I think that could be done in many different ways.

On the surface, the bill looks great. We all support financial literacy and moving in that direction is something we want to encourage and promote. In essence, the government is saying that it will create an office of sorts and there will to be a reporting mechanism for this particular officer.

Within the Liberal Party, we see financial literacy as a major issue. Therefore, we are wondering why the government is not providing a better definition of exactly what it is it is proposing with the legislation. What sort of a budget are we talking about? I believe it is a bit vague or unclear in terms of where and how it might reach out into our communities.

I believe the provinces have a critical role to play in this discussion. To what degree has the federal government worked in co-operation with the provinces to ensure we are moving in the right direction? At the provincial level, we could go right into the schools, which could involve the school trustees or administrators.

What I am suggesting is that there are many different stakeholders who have a vested interest in trying to do what this bill is hoping to do, which is to achieve a higher level of financial literacy. To what degree has the government done consultations to bring forward legislation that is all-encompassing and that will provide for a better level of literacy for all Canadians?

In my short time in the House, I have found that there is a different attitude from the present government and the way in which it approaches public policy compared to members on the opposition benches, in particular with regard to the Liberal Party. We in the Liberal Party believe that the national government has a strong role to play. I would suggest that it is a leadership role in trying to ensure that there are standards across the nation and that we have something that reaches out in a co-operative manner, supporting provincial and other initiatives where we can.

I believe the gambit is wide, which is why it would have been good to have received some sense of a commitment from the government as to how much money it is prepared to commit to a commissioner of this nature. What sort of office will it be? The government may be looking at the possibility of the banking industry having to cover the cost of this new office or to facilitate the needs of this particular legislation. However, we do not know what the dollar value of it is. We also do not know how the government will bring in the stakeholders with regard to this important issue.

I started off by talking about the financial crisis that occurred in the United States. It did not take long for people to get an appreciation of exactly what was taking place, how people had overextended themselves on loans and how the housing market and its artificially high prices led to the crash of the housing market. Ultimately, hundreds of thousands of Americans went bankrupt because of what the banking industry was unable to do, because of a lack of healthy, strong regulations.

In Canada, there was a great deal of pressure to allow for more deregulation of the banking industry. However, there were safeguards in place. During the nineties, individuals like Paul Martin and Jean Chrétien said that we needed to have regulation to ensure that mortgages did not become 40 or 50 years in duration. People learned a lot by watching the news and hearing how so many Americans were losing their homes. Canada was in good part able to avoid a lot of that because of good policy decisions made during the nineties.

This brings us back to the issue of what we can do to ensure that Canada's financial markets, industries and consumers are best protected. That is the reason we talk about the importance of education. That is really what it is all about. When I make reference to issues such as RRSPs, owning a home or making major purchases, we want citizens to be educated to make the best decisions possible. The only way we can achieve that is to ensure that there is some sort of an educational process regarding financial literacy from coast to coast. The greatest challenge the government has in regard to financial literacy across Canada is to demonstrate that it has a national, strong, healthy leadership role to play in this area. I am not convinced the government members believe they have to play that lead role.

I know some provinces have gone a long way in providing better consumer education on financial matters, from banking fees to cheque cashing stores. They have increased the level of consumer awareness. There are many initiatives which have been taken by individual provinces. This bill brings forward the idea of the need for the federal government to play a role in financial literacy. I would challenge the government to reflect on what degree it is prepared to say that Ottawa needs to get all of the stakeholders working together to ensure that a financial literacy office has teeth and the ability to make a difference.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for his discussion on Bill C-28. I have some concerns about the bill, having dealt with the government for six years. Many times the government sets up straw dogs that really do not accomplish much. The government has established a commission to look into complaints for human rights and environmental conditions around Canadian mining companies in other countries. The commission has basically done nothing.

In this country, we need a lot of consumer protection and consumer information. Financial information is a very important part of that. It is a very complex field for Canadians to understand how to best use their financial system to their own benefit. We are talking about playing a game against people who have much larger and more elaborate plans. How can we guarantee that what is in this bill will actually deliver anything for Canadians?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I see that the member shares my concern about the issue of leadership. Indeed, the government can put measures into legislation so that it can go around the country and say that it wants to play this role, but my concern is about what is in the bill. It is that real sense of commitment that we are looking for. I think that has been lacking from the national government.

There are issues within the financial industry that should be raising flags. People are concerned about interest rates on credit cards, user fees, banking fees and so forth. There is so much more that we could be doing.

I want to emphasize the leadership role of bringing all the stakeholders together. We need something more than just saying, “Here is a bill”. We want to say that we have passed the legislation. We want effective leadership on this particular front. At the end of the day, it saves our consumers, it provides for consumer confidence and it is better for the overall economy if the government is genuine. I just do not necessarily believe that the government is prepared to play that strong national leadership role. That is the biggest concern I have with respect to this bill.

[James Rajotte, Conservative, Edmonton—Leduc, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am a little uncertain whether the member does support the concept of a financial literacy leader. I have noticed, since starting to work on this issue, the number of people across the country who are making an effort with respect to financial literacy, whether it is through non-governmental organizations, institutions or individually. They are asking for national leadership, which he pointed out in his speech. Therefore, they do want a financial literacy leader and they do want him or her to work with the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada.

Can the member clarify for the record if he supports this leader and does he support him or her working within the gamut of the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the federal government has a responsibility to take action on the principle that the member is talking about, the need for financial literacy and strong leadership. Whether it is driven by the private sector or the non-profit sector, there is just cause for us to be much more proactive on financial literacy and education for all Canadians. The quicker and the more sincere we are at addressing that issue, the healthier our economy will be in the long term. That could be done through ensuring there is more accountability and transparency. It could be done by a government that is prepared to get all of the stakeholders around the table and take a proactive approach, whether in school divisions, schools, governments, work environments or television ads, whatever it takes to increase the financial literacy of the population.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I see nothing objectionable in Bill C-28. We need greater financial literacy among Canadians.

I wonder if the bill has been costed. We are considering creating a new office within the federal government. I imagine the bill speaks to the expense accounts of that office and someone with the title financial literacy leader.

Have we examined as a House whether the goals of the bill could be better accomplished through sufficient support to groups like the Consumers' Association of Canada or Democracy Watch? They have done a lot of good work in making Canadians aware of their banking processes.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the government has not provided Parliament with a plan regarding Bill C-28. We do not know how much it is going to cost. In regard to the financial literacy leader, we need to know what sort of resources the government is prepared to allocate to the position.

As my NDP colleague mentioned, we have to be excused for not just buying into everything that the government is trying to sell with this legislation. It is one thing to say here is a bill but it is another thing to put some teeth in it. We are not convinced that there is a solid commitment to having a well financed office that would produce the desired outcome. We recognize how critically important the issue of financial literacy is. It is an important file. Young people need to be more involved in the financial environment. The benefits far outweigh any sort of potential costs that might be incurred in making sure that we do it right and that the federal government plays a leadership role.

[Pierre Jacob, NDP, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his lovely speech. He said that it is important to educate people about financial matters. I agree that that is a good idea. Education is one thing.

According to my Liberal Party colleague, is the Liberal Party's objective to prioritize average Canadians, to protect average consumers, to offer a better financial security plan for retirement and to level the playing field between average Canadians and big institutions by regulating the industry?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the member's comments but I do not necessarily agree with them.

The primary objective is to ensure that Canadians have a better understanding of financial matters. These include mortgage rates, consumer prices and what is happening within the macro and the micro environmental conditions in our communities. That is really what we are looking for. That is best done by a national government working with the different stakeholders and having the resources to do that so the overall quality of education related to financial matters improves.

We have not necessarily seen the required leadership from the government. The government is saying here is the bill, but we are concerned about the lack of commitment to follow through with the bill itself.

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

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Rivière-des-Mille-Îles.

This is yet another in a series of governing on the back of an envelope from the government side. The government tried to amend Bill C-10, and discovered it could not. It then had to send the bill to the Senate to have some amendments made. Now it will come back to the House.

We then had the lawful access bill, the awful access bill, which the government had to withdraw. It had to send the bill to committee so some amendments could be made to please Canadians.

Now we have this bill. It seems to be extremely poorly thought out. It does not actually deal with the recommendations of the task force, except to create a new bureaucracy. Canadians do not need another level of bureaucracy.

According to the bill, a position would be created, with no definition of what the person would do and with a very vague statement of consulting with stakeholders, which have not been defined. Are the stakeholders the big banks? Are they the payday lenders? Are they the big and powerful corporations that want better tax regimes? Who are the stakeholders in this?

The bill does not deal with the bulk of the recommendations that came from the task force. In fact, it only deals with half of one, which is to appoint a leader. The other recommendations suggested that the government spend money on making Canadians better able to deal with their day to day financial pressures. They are such things as integrating financial literacy into the Canada student loans program. That would require an expenditure. This proposed new individual would not have the authority to spend money.

There was the recommendation that government make financial literacy training programs for young Canadians eligible for funding through the youth employment strategy. Again, the bill would not do that. There was the recommendation that the Government of Canada, as part of the renewal of the urban aboriginal strategy, make financial literacy training programs for young aboriginal Canadians eligible for funding. Again, funding is not a part of the bill.

The recommendation to provide relevant financial information and education services for recent newcomers through the newcomers to Canada program, again, would require funding. In Toronto the funding for CIC programs is being cut.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. There does not appear to be a quorum in the House.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

There appears to be 20 people in the chamber.

Resuming debate, the hon. member for York South—Weston.

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

Mr. Speaker, the task force recommended that, “the Government of Canada, as well as provincial and territorial governments, invest in the capacity of the voluntary sector”. The individual would not have the power to invest anything. It also recommended that, ”the Government of Canada support existing capacity-building initiatives in First Nations communities by offering culturally relevant financial literacy tools, training and resources”. However, there is no funding in the bill for resources. The bill is all about creating a bureaucracy that has absolutely no ability to do anything except perhaps talk to a few people about what they ought to do with financial literacy.

There is no definition in the bill of financial literacy. What is it? Let us talk about some real examples of missing financial literacy in my riding. Would the bill actually fix these things?

A 59-year-old gentleman in my riding was laid-off from his job. As he had paid into the EI system for many years, he tried to collect it. However, EI was not available, not because of his fault or the fault of his employer, but because of the fault of the EI administration. It took 11 months for him to finally get his EI. In that period of time, would financial literacy have helped him collect EI better? I do not think so because it was not forthcoming.

In that 11-month period, he managed to lose his house. Would financial literacy have prevented him from losing his house? No. The big bank, I think it was the Royal Bank, decided he had missed too many payments because he did not get his EI in time. When he did get his EI, but by then it was too late.

We have an example of an individual for whom financial literacy means absolutely nothing because the systems and structures that are in place do not prevent the horrible impacts that the delay of 11 months for EI had on he and his family. He now lives on somebody's couch.

On subprime loans in the U.S., would financial literacy have helped the migrant farm worker making $12,000 a year decide to say no to a quarter-million dollar loan? Would financial literacy have prevented the subprime mortgage crisis in the U.S.? I do not think so.

If I am making $12,000 a year and somebody tells me that I could have a quarter-million dollars to buy a house and live in it for as long as I wanted because the government would back the loan, would I turn that down because there was a financial literacy program? I do not think so. These kinds of things just do not happen.

Would the financial literacy program help eliminate payday lenders? We hope so. However, what of the single mom who is told by the doctor that she has to buy a prescription for her sick daughter and she does not have the money for it because her paycheque does not come in until Thursday? There is no drug plan in any of the three part-time jobs she has to hold down in order to keep her head above water. Would financial literacy prevent her from going to a payday lender? I do not think so. Although she knows it is wrong and stupid to pay 1,000% on a loan, she does not have a choice because the financial structures in our country do not prevent the need for these payday lenders.

According to the member for Newmarket—Aurora yesterday, financial literacy would help Canadians understand some of the complexities of what was going on in financial markets and how they could respond as individuals to the things that were happening. What does that mean?

As an ordinary Canadian consumer, I have to respond to something going on in Greece and the financial markets in Europe and Tokyo? Maybe 1% of Canadians do, but I do not think that 1% have a need for financial literacy training. Canadians depend on the government to look out for them on these kinds of things. They depend on the government to pay attention to what goes on in those financial markets and act accordingly.

The government should not be considering financial literacy as a way for ordinary consumers to somehow find a way to protect themselves from these financial markets. Maybe the answer is to put all of our RRSP money in our mattresses and then we would not lose half of it when those financial markets go down.

I do not think there is going to be a financial literacy course anywhere in our country that is going to tell people to put their money in their mattresses because those financial literacy courses are going to be conducted by the big banks, whose job it is to ensure that people are investing in them, and the take 2% or 3% of people's money to keep their profits up.

Financial literacy for Canadians is knowing a bunch of things about their own financial health, such as knowing, for example, that being in a union means better wages, benefits and retirement security. Will that be part of the financial training? I doubt it. It is knowing that the tax credits for children's arts programs and other things, which are non-refundable, do not help most of the people in my riding. They are too poor to afford the children's arts program in the first place and they do not pay enough taxes to use that credit. It is knowing that non-refundable tax credits for transit passes are not of any benefit to the poor, but they are the people who use transit passes. The non-refundable tax credit does nothing for them.

It is knowing that indiscriminate tax cuts to rich and powerful corporations do not trickle down to the indefensible individuals in my riding. It does not create jobs for them. The jobs have disappeared. There were 400,000 manufacturing jobs that disappeared in Ontario alone since the government took office and those jobs were family supporting and created employment in a way that people could afford to have families, mortgages and live above the poverty line. Those jobs have disappeared under the government and have not been replaced.

Financial literacy is knowing which side of the House is good for ordinary Canadians. Financial literacy is knowing that we are.

[James Rajotte, Conservative, Edmonton—Leduc, AB]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague talked about the establishment of a new bureaucracy. We are not going to recreate the existing Financial Consumer Agency of Canada. It will be the agency that works with the financial literacy leader if the bill passes.

Is he aware that there will be co-operation between an existing agency, not a newly-created agency, and the financial literacy leader if the bill passes?

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

Mr. Speaker, yes, I am quite aware that this position is incorporated, in part, in another agency. I was not suggesting that the government was creating another agency. I said that it was creating another level of bureaucracy, without any definition of what that bureaucrat would do or how the individual would accomplish tasks. He or she would have a salary, an office and staff. The person may require French-language training if the individual does not have the required bilingualism.

It is not creating another agency, I agree, but it is creating a position with very little to do.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, I heard the presentation yesterday by the Conservative member for Saint Boniface, who mentioned a number of different things that would be accomplished within the financial literacy leader's role. I understand the nature of what is going ahead and yet, when I read the bill, I see nothing that indicates any surety that these things are going to become part of the financial information and direction that the government provides to corporations that lend money to Canadians or engage in financial transactions with Canadians.

How can we agree to this position when the government seems intransigent on the needs of consumers? How can we expect anything good to come out of the bill?

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

Mr. Speaker, we want good things to come from the government, but the bill does not do it. The bill does not deal with the fact that credit card interest rates are one of the biggest scourges in this land. There are credit card interest rates of 30% and 40%, yet the prime rate is around 1.5% or 2%. The rest of it is pure profit. There are systems in our country that actually pick on the poor and vulnerable. Nothing in the bill would deal with those issues.

The bill, apparently, would simply create an office. Without any of the other things in the recommendations, it will not accomplish what we want it to accomplish.

[Laurin Liu, NDP, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have this opportunity to speak to Bill C-28, An Act to amend the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada Act, which would create the position of financial literacy leader to strengthen Canadians' financial literacy. This initiative was inspired by a report from the task force created by the Conservative government and chaired by bankers, including Donald Stewart of Sun Life Financial and Jacques Ménard of BMO Nesbitt Burns.

I went through the literacy report that was released in February 2011. To my great surprise, it contained not a word about credit card companies' quasi-usurious interest rates, not a word about financial institutions' lack of transparency concerning their fees, not a word about the questionable practices of banks that demand exorbitant fees when people try to pay off their mortgages early. Do not expect to find a mea culpa in this report from bankers who have sold highly speculative toxic financial products for years and continue to do so. Honestly, I was very disappointed.

The Conservatives keep telling us that consumers get themselves into debt because they do not know how to read a credit contract. But the government is ignoring the fact that annual interest rates on credit cards are often around 20%.

I would like to quote from the evidence given by a few individuals who expressed concern about this bill. First of all, Ken Georgetti of the Canadian Labour Congress said, “Canadians need better government policy rather than lectures on how to save money.... This report heaps blame on 'uninformed' individuals, and completely ignores the predatory behaviour of financial institutions.”

Jim Stanford of the CAW said,“Many financial literacy programs devolve into admonishments for individuals to save more. This is misplaced....”

Lauren Willis, a professor at Loyola Law School in the United States, also denounced the government's approach. She said, “When consumers find themselves in dire financial straits, the regulation through education model blames them for their plight, shaming them and deflecting calls for effective market regulation.”

The ministers of this government like to rise here in the House of Commons and tell us that it is up to Canadians to save and plan for their futures. Those same ministers then turn around and slash social programs like the ones designed to ensure a decent retirement for our seniors.

For instance, instead of strengthening the public pension system, they created a pooled registered pension plan, which will only encourage investors further to choose risky private funds and stock markets.

We also know that the Prime Minister told the bankers in Davos that he was going to make cuts to the old age security program and that one way he was going to do so was by increasing the eligibility age from 65 to 67.

Last week, I held a public consultation in the town of Boisbriand in my riding. I can tell you that people are very worried about the fact that the government refuses to take responsibility where the financial security of our seniors is concerned.

It is not up to the public to pay for the Conservatives' F-35s. It is not up to the public to pay for the tax credits that are given to corporations.

With the creation of pooled registered pension plans, the dismantling of old age security and the reinforcement of tools for small investor autonomy, the Conservatives' message is very clear: the government, as they see it, does not need to look after the financial security of seniors and retirees. That approach makes no sense.

For Barrie McKenna of the Globe and Mail, “Looking to financial literacy to fill the void is like asking ordinary Canadians to be their own brain surgeons and airline pilots. The dizzying array of financial products, mixed with chaotic and increasingly irrational financial markets, makes the job of do-it-yourself financial planning almost impossible—no matter how literate you are”.

The other problem is that households with a high debt load often do not have the means to use these individual retirement planning mechanisms. Some 30% of Canadian families do not have any retirement savings outside the Canada pension plan.

As Jim Stanford of the CAW clearly observed, personal savings will never be a significant source of financial security for most Canadians since they are unable to save as a result of their low incomes.

It is all well and good to encourage personal saving, but it is this government that caused Canadians to lose well-paid jobs, particularly in the manufacturing sector, and replaced them with unstable jobs. It is under this government that Canadians' quality of life has declined. Single mothers who struggle to put something away for retirement are not to blame. Students in debt who cannot count on secure employment when they graduate are not to blame. And the seniors whom the government is asking to work two more years even though it knows that many of them not capable of doing so are certainly not to blame.

The New Democrats have a better plan for financial security at retirement. We are proposing that the government strengthen the guaranteed pension plans in Canada and Quebec and gradually double benefits in an affordable manner, thereby giving Canadians an acceptable level of guaranteed income during retirement. These are the general circumstances surrounding Bill C-28.

In the time I have remaining, I would like to address two other issues: the bill adds a useless bureaucratic institution and it does not require the candidate to be bilingual.

Given that Canada's current consumer protection regime is extremely fragile, I fail to see how adding a new layer of bureaucracy will help consumers. Without any real political direction, guidance on how to increase financial literacy or accountability mechanism, there is no reason to believe that the financial literacy leader will have the tools needed to carry out his mission. As the hon. member mentioned, this bill does not even include a definition of financial literacy.

At a time when the Conservatives are preparing to cut government programs by 10%, it does not make any sense to create another bureaucratic structure responsible for protecting consumers. If the government really wants to invest in protecting consumers, why does it not simply support the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada, Option consommateurs or the Réseau de protection du consommateur du Québec?

I am thinking of an organization in my riding, the Lower Laurentians ACEF, which does an excellent job of teaching budgeting on a low income. This organization really helps the people in my riding. As an aside, I cannot help but criticize the fact that the bill does not explicitly state that the financial literacy leader must be bilingual. The past actions of this government betray its insensitivity towards French. Members will recall that this government did not hesitate to appoint judges and an auditor general who do not know French.

In the circumstances, it is understandable that the official opposition will try to amend the bill to ensure that bilingualism is one of the job requirements. Yes, financial literacy is very important, but this is not the type of debate that we should be having right now in the House of Commons. Furthermore, creating the position of financial literacy leader is a false solution. This new bureaucratic creature does nothing to allay the growing financial concerns of small investors.

We believe that the best way to support consumers is to create a department or agency that would be a one-stop shop for all consumer protection issues. This organization would cut down on bureaucracy because it would consist of structures that already exist, but are scattered throughout government.

I will now take questions from my hon. colleagues.

[Pierre Jacob, NDP, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for her brilliant speech.

I realize that the Conservatives' bill is intended to help well-connected insiders rather than average people. With that in mind, I would like my colleague to explain why the NDP believes it is so important to help Canadian families deal with the current economic situation and to leave nobody behind, including young people, adults and seniors.

[Laurin Liu, NDP, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.

The NDP is worried about the fact that Canadians do not save enough money. That being said, our primary concern should be the disparity between the rising cost of living and wages. The Conservative government has presided over job losses in the manufacturing sector. Well-paid jobs that enabled people to support their families have been replaced by unstable, poorly paid jobs. We think that is the debate we should be having in the House.

Financial literacy is certainly important, but the real challenge Canadians are facing is the fact that the cost of living is going up, but wages are not keeping pace.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, with respect to financial literacy, most Canadians think about interest rates, consumer debt, banking fees, things of that nature. It will take a group effort by stakeholders, including consumer advocacy groups and different levels of government, the federal government in particular. We recognize the federal government has a leadership role in ensuring overall improved consumer financial literacy.

Would the member agree that the federal government's role is one of leadership on this file?

[Laurin Liu, NDP, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I agree that the government needs to take action, but leadership is not something we find in this legislation. As my colleague mentioned before, we do not find a definition of financial literacy. We do not find a clear mandate for this new bureaucracy.

The government keeps saying that it needs to cut bureaucracy and lay off people. Why is it trying to create new levels of bureaucracy that do not have a clear mandate or a clear idea of where they are going? Yes, this is a problem we need to deal with, but the legislation simply does not do that.

[Raymond Côté, NDP, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I wish to congratulate my hon. colleague on her speech on such an important topic.

In my speech yesterday on the same topic, I spoke at length about the government's reprehensible abandonment, which Bill C-28 will definitely not resolve. What really troubles me is that, because of this abandonment, and because of the complexity of the financial products coming on the market more and more, many people have become victims of their own lack of knowledge and inability to face the music.

Is the government not trying to heap blame on the very people who are likely to lose out here, who will become victims of abuse of these products?

[Laurin Liu, NDP, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, indeed, those less fortunate cannot afford to set any money aside for their retirement. We also know that single mothers, for instance, who are simply trying to feed their children, should not be expected to save. Of course, it is much easier for the wealthiest members of society to put aside some money for their retirement. We really need to take care of those less fortunate, those who are most vulnerable, and this bill does nothing to help that demographic.

The House resumed from March 2 consideration of the motion that Bill C-28, An Act to amend the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee, and of the motion that this question be now put.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Madam Speaker, I rise today in opposition to the motion to create a financial literacy leader. I really struggled with it. What does this mean? As I read into it more and more, I came to the realization that it was not a new leader we needed in financial literacy. We need to address the dire condition in which our citizens live. We need to address unemployment. We need to address the fact that the cost of living is going way up. We need to address, and the government has failed to address, the rising costs of credit cards. It has failed to address the fact that the average Canadian right now has a debt load of 150% of their income. That is just unacceptable.

One thing I learned a long time ago is just creating a leader—

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

Order, please. I regret to interrupt the hon. member, but I would like to ask for some order in the House. The member for Newton—North Delta has the floor and there will be time for questions and comments. I ask members to wait until they are recognized.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Madam Speaker, Canadians are struggling with an onslaught of attacks from the government across the way, an attack through the Trojan Horse budget bill, an attack on environmental assessment, an attack on pensions, just to mention a few things. This is at a time when the gap between the rich and poor is growing in Canada. Some people in my riding are working two or three jobs to make ends meet. Others are worried about being able to pay their bills from week to week.

Creating a financial literacy leader absolutely will not address the issues. This is what I find a bit hypocritical. This is at a time when government is cutting jobs that serve citizens across Canada, and we see heavy cutting in some areas. For example, people have to wait on the phone for longer and longer and have to go to the web to get essential services like EI. They cannot get a hold of a human being to ask questions. Yet the government wants to create a new leader, another layer of bureaucracy, without a clear mandate, without a clear accountability structure, without knowing what that person will do. It is time for the government to stop doing things like that.

There is a time for accountability and citizens look to us for that. However, the government has demonstrated over and over again that it is not about accountability. The Conservatives have shut down debate in the House over and over again, so the citizens of Canada do not get to find out what they are really up to. I do not know what their rush is. It is as if the Conservatives want to skate through and pass as much legislation as they can in as short a time as they can and interfere with parliamentary democracy. If anything, what would give the Canadian public confidence, and maybe more literacy about finance, is if the Minister of Finance would walk into the House and table reports and then let us debate them and take our time. At least the members could carry out the responsibility with which we have been entrusted.

We are not just about opposing. We have some solutions and really good solutions. We look forward to this bill going to the committee. When it does, we will try to mitigate the damage it will do. We will try to address key issues. We will add the fact that there should be a requirement for bilingualism. We are a bilingual nation and yet once again the government manages to produce legislation where the second official language is not given the due respect it deserves. We will add provisions to define what is meant by “financial literacy”. Right now, it is smoke and mirrors. It is “let's do something but not tell anybody what we are doing”, so much like many of the other things we have seen happen in the House.

We will also move amendments that will recognize that financial literacy means different things, depending on one's income, gender and age. We will also ensure that whoever or whatever system is put in place is more accountable.

Let us face it, the legislation will not create more jobs. It will not address the needs of citizens in Atlantic Canada, or in western Canada, or central or northern Canada who only want to have a decent paying job to support themselves. Nor will the legislation address what the government needs to address but has failed, and that is a better plan for retirement security by expanding the guaranteed Canada and Quebec pension plans. That is where we should be putting our energy. We should also be looking at affordable housing. We should be looking at the things that everyday citizens are struggling with.

Instead, once again, what is the Conservative solution to the everyday struggle of Canadians? It is that we should have a literacy leader. I wish just creating a leader would solve all our problems, but I can assure everyone it is not.

Let me read what Rob Carrick, personal finance columnist in the Globe and Mail, had to say. He stated, “it's disappointing to see banks, advice firms, investment dealers and mutual fund companies treated solely like part of the solution to the lack of financial literacy in Canada, and not part of the problem as well”.

Who were the key people the minister listened to, the ones who designed this legislation? It was the financiers, the bankers. The government certainly did not set up an advisory committee of citizens who would be impacted, those who experienced the high costs of credit cards and who suffered during the stock market meltdown. Once again, the very people who created some of the problems are the advisers.

The article went on to say that it did not matter how literate one was, the financial markets were increasingly irrational.

Barrie McKenna, who is a business columnist for the Globe and Mail, said:

The average credit-card agreement is as intuitive as quantum physics...

Canadians are constantly bombarded with pitches to take on more debt, whether it’s right for them or not. They’re often blindly steered toward high-fee products and complex financial instruments. The accompanying disclosure statements are written by, and for, lawyers...

There is a sounder and arguably less-costly path, but it doesn’t suit the financial services industry or many business groups. Ottawa could mandate plain-English disclosure.

What would that cost? Nada. The amount of time that is going to be spent debating this bill could be spent debating capping the credit card rates, simple disclosure laws and also trying to address the real concerns of Canadians.

He goes on to say:

Working with the provinces, it could enhance regulation of industry sales incentives and defined-contribution pensions.

And Ottawa could beef up the CPP, mandating that Canadians sock away more money for retirement, while benefiting from the CPP Investment Board’s low administrative costs.

I am not going to pretend to be an accountant or a lawyer, but I look at a very simple fact like this. In the last quarter, the CPP outperformed the markets by a margin of 10 to 1. What an example we could set for Canadians if we were to say that we as parliamentarians, who manage the taxes they pay, have seen the wisdom of this and that is what we will do for them. However, instead, what do we do? We are now going to have a new financial leader and we are going to tell people that instead of retiring at 65, they are going to have to keep working until age 67, that they can do it. We are going to be the cheering section edging them on along that path.

I would urge all members in the House to take a look at what is really impacting Canadians today and not create another level of bureaucracy that is going to add nothing to what Canadians need.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Madam Speaker, I listened with bemusement to my colleague's comments, but I want to pick on one little point. She said that the CPP had outperformed the market by 10% last year. Does she understand that the CPP is actually invested in the market and there are very educated people who manage CPP investments in the market? That is what are we are talking about, some financial literacy so other people can make informed decisions as well.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Madam Speaker, I wish I could say that I was amused by my colleague's delivery but I will say that he has made his point. When we have a collective, a publicly funded, publicly managed, public pension fund, and it is managed by—

[Bob Zimmer]

It sounds like you need financial literacy.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

I regret to interrupt. I am requesting members to have more orderly conduct. There is a member who has the floor and I would ask members to respect that.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

That it is the best way for us to ensure that Canadians have a secure retirement. That is what it is all about. It is not about creating another position of bureaucracy. It is not about telling people to save more money when they are finding it difficulty to make ends meet. We need to look at this in a very productive way so that we serve the needs of the public.

[Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe, NDP, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would first of all like to thank my colleague for her very interesting speech.

I am pleased that she has given us so many examples of concrete action that we could take now to help people who are financially vulnerable, such as seniors who are not able to set aside the money they will need for a secure retirement that will allow them to live in dignity for a long time. I would like to add another example of something concrete that we could do to help people who need financial support.

The guaranteed income supplement is a sum that is given to seniors who are living the closest to the poverty line. To some extent, they can receive it but, at this point in time, if they do not ask for it, it is just too bad for them, we use the money for something else and they do not receive it.

We could allow seniors to have access to this money right now. I would like to point out that these are seniors who are living the closest to the poverty level. We could take concrete action and allow them to receive this money that will allow them to live with dignity. Instead of talking about concrete actions that we could take today to help people, the government is focusing the debate on something else.

I am fully in agreement with my colleague on this issue.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Madam Speaker, absolutely there are a number of concrete steps that we should be taking. This party has often advocated and will continue to advocate so that our seniors do not live in poverty and are not having to choose between medication and food on the table.

We have talked about ways to address the needs of the public, such as addressing the fees for university students and the cost of post-secondary education. We should also be looking at addressing health care in a very realistic way so that people have access to health care in a timely manner.

We could be doing so many things but once again the government, after last week's travesty with Bill C-38 and then it passing through the House this week, is in the process of shutting down debate. The government was not interested in the over 800 amendments that were put forward that would have made the bill better for Canadians. It did not accept one amendment.

I am just hoping, now that the government has passed that bill, that when this goes to committee stage it will pay heed to the amendments put forward by the opposition.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Newton—North Delta for perhaps setting the tone of the debate as we enter the conversation about Bill C-28 and this notion of a new financial literacy leader.

It surprises me that we are having this debate. In this era of belt tightening, the best thing that the Conservatives can come up with to address the issue of financial literacy is to create a high level, expensive, bureaucratic position with no real plan and no guarantee that it will have any of the desired effects in elevating the financial literacy of the general population. It seems like a big PR campaign and, frankly, a phenomenal waste of money.

What is even more worrisome is that there this element of blame the victim that runs throughout this whole notion, which is that if we are seeing greater financial inequality, somehow it is the consumers who are to blame for getting themselves into this mess.

We should note that the notion of a financial literacy leader has its origins in a national task force on financial literacy that was criticized as soon as it got out of the gate because the chair was, of course, a banker. The majority of the members on the task force were either bankers, or in the financial sector, or associated with it. The recommendations they came up with had more to do with making Canadians into good customers for the banks rather than elevating the standard of living conditions or even the financial literacy of the general public. The recommendations were suspect from the very outset given the origins, the motivations and, I would say, the conflict of interest from the principals chosen to be on this task force.

Even he recommendations that came out of the task force were ignored when it came to putting them into a bill. The task force recommended that this new financial literacy leader be guided by input from an advisory council made up of industry, unions, educators, volunteer organizations, et cetera. However, there is no mention of that whatsoever in Bill C-28. It seemed reasonable to have an advisory committee to at least steer, give some direction and some sense of purpose to this new expensive bureaucracy, but that notion was ignored.

The other thing the task force recommended was that the financial literacy leader should be accessible to the general public through reports tabled by the Minister of Finance in Parliament. That did not find its way into the bill either.

Therefore, the financial literacy leader would be operating in isolation doing, we do not know what, having the effect of, we do not know what. Who will audit the efficacy of the financial literacy leader?

Those are some of the things that bother me. This is an urgent issue but the problem lies more with the lack of protection for consumers than it does the consumers' personal education.

I want to talk for a minute about what the government could be doing.

There used to be a time within living memory, and I am not that old but I remember, when there was a minister of consumer and corporate affairs. It was a whole department with a fairly high profile minister. This was not just a small portfolio in cabinet. There were heavyweights like André Ouellet, big names in Canadian politics were the ministers of consumer and corporate affairs. Their stated mandate was to protect the best interests of the consumer, not the financial sector, not the predatory lenders and not the gougers and users who charge 10 and 15 points above prime for credit card lending rates.

If the government really wanted to do something for the consumers' best interest against predatory lending, why would it not cap the credit rates to 6 points above prime and never mind 18 points above prime? Why does it not enforce the Financial Administration Act and the Bank Act to make banks live up to their charter and provide reasonable access to Canadians to basic financial services, and if they will not live up to their charter, why do we not pull their charters?

The banks have an exclusive monopoly on some very lucrative financial transactions, like cashing cheques and credit cards, in exchange for providing basic services to Canadians, even when it is not the most profitable thing in the world. However, what do they do? They close down bank branches in every neighbourhood in this country.

In my riding alone, 15 bank branches have closed down. That is a vote of non-confidence in my neighbourhood and it is an abrogation of their obligation under their charter. We have charter banks for a reason. We should pull their charters if they are not going to live up to their financial obligations. Every time a bank pulls out of my neighbourhood, do members know what pops up? Another Money Mart or another Payday lender, and it is not charging interest at 60%, that is in the Criminal Code. If a lender charges more than 60% per annum, it is a criminal offence called usury. The interest rate at these Payday lenders is not 1,000% or 2,000%. It is as high as 10,000% per annum. People cannot make that kind of money selling cocaine but yet it is happening on the street corners of every major city in this country because the banks have reneged on their obligation to provide basic financial services. They are charging 3% to cash a government cheque. It is against the law and the government will not enforce it.

Members can walk to the Sparks Street Mall right now and some money lender in a Money Mart will charge them 3% to cash a government cheque. It is illegal but the government does nothing to enforce it. Instead, it will put in place this expensive bureaucrat, God knows who. I presume some failed Conservative candidate is in line to be the new financial literacy leader.

This is the most appalling thing. I believe this is all part of the whole notion of driving down Canadians' expectations. The government believes in a low wage, low cost economy and low wage, low cost economy is a recipe for poverty, mark my words.

Forty-seven percent of the children in my riding live below the poverty line, and members heard me correctly. The child poverty rate in Norway, Denmark and Sweden is less than 3% because they do not have this notion of a low wage, low cost economy. They do not see it virtuous to drive down workers' wages. They do not see it as virtuous to smash unions.

I saw a bumper sticker the last time I was in Washington, DC. that read, “At least the war on the middle-class is going well”. That government has embarked on a comprehensive detailed attack on labour and the left, just like the neo-Conservatives in Canada have followed suit, eliminating things like the Fair Wages Act, enabling the Merit shop contractors and the non-union sector to flourish and prosper.

This is the way to drive down the middle-class. This is the way to drive down wages and drive down expectations. Then the government will blame people for not saving their money and, instead of having a real pension plan, they can have one of these pooled pension plans that the employer does not have to pay into, only the worker.

It is all part of picture. The Conservatives' vision of Canada is to recreate Canada in the image of the United States, and t is not a model we want to follow. I have been to the United States recently where in North Carolina a decent job pays $9 to $10 an hour. Is that the economy and the vision of the Conservatives where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and then some guy is getting gouged by these financial institutions?

My colleague from Newton—North Delta had a good point. No amount of financial literacy will help somebody understand how to sell short on a derivative of a hedge fund or understand some of these arcane financial instruments that these financial engineers put in place to deliberately obfuscate and make it impossible to make an informed choice or decision. I challenge any stockbroker on Bay Street to explain some of these derivative hedge fund monstrosities that were actually a great cause of the demise in the most recent downturn.

If we had kids going to engineering school and actually learning how to build things instead of going to financial engineering school to learn how to construct these incomprehensible financial instruments, we would be a lot better off. We would have a generation of young people who could do things instead of a generation of young people who are trained to cheat people and help the financial sector cheat Canadians.

We want to see consumer protection in its purest form. As I said, we do not have to look very far back in Canadian history to when we had a minister of consumer and corporate affairs who was a champion for Canadians, not a shill for the financial sector. That is what we are seeing here.

We cannot support this bill. We disagree profoundly with the Conservative vision of any kind of enhancing or enabling of people to cope with the financial services sector.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to take a few seconds to congratulate my colleague on his excellent speech, which was articulate, inspirational and witty, like the member himself.

We put our money into a bank. It charges us administrative fees for taking money out of the automatic bank machine. If we are unfortunate enough to go to another bank, which makes billions of dollars each year, it will charge us $1.50, $1.75 or $2 to withdraw our own money.

What does the Conservative bill do to stop people from being robbed by the banks?

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Madam Speaker, exactly; my colleague is getting the point that the Conservatives seem to be missing, that if they want to do something to protect consumers, they should do something to protect consumers. They should not embark on this public relations campaign that we are going to put in place this expensive bureaucrat with no mandate, no accountability, no reporting structure and no advisory committee to give him or her a sense of direction. We are just going to put this person in place and the Conservatives would say that they have done something to help Canadians protect themselves from being gouged. But they should look to the root of the problem. They must stop their friends on Bay Street from gouging Canadians. It is not that difficult if they would stand up on their hind legs. The great only appear great because we are on our knees.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Madam Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his eloquence this evening in the House. It is deeply appreciated, at least on our side. I want to get to something that the member said about the propensity of the government to blame victims. We have, for example, record household debt in this country and a lot of it due to the lack of affordable housing. The government's response is just to hector Canadians into saving more while at the same time bashing them over the head that they should spend more.

With respect to the pensions crisis, the Conservatives' response is not to increase the Canada pension plan. Their response is to present some pooled pension Ponzi scheme, and here we are tonight, where instead of dealing with income inequality and with the fact that wages do not keep apace with the cost of living in Canada, the Conservatives present us with some piece of paper that is not going to help Canadians deal with the very real financial issues.

I would like the member to delve deeper into the government's propensity to blame victims, not just in Canada but globally.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Madam Speaker, it is true that Canadians need better government policy, not lectures by the government on how they should be saving more money. This report and the bill that stems from it heap blame on individuals and completely ignore the predatory behaviour of financial institutions.

My colleague made an interesting point. I am not sure that the inequality bothers the Conservatives. I am not even sure that equality is a stated policy objective of the government anymore, whereas it used to be a prime motivation in terms of social policy. Equality was the goal. Inequality seems to be accepted as perhaps just the way God wanted it. I do not know.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Madam Speaker, the member talked about this bill as being a way of exhorting Canadians to save. There is a particular group that the Conservatives insist ought to save so they can pay for two more years that they are not going to get old age pension, age 65 and 66.

Who is going to be able to save for that? And who is going to be most affected by that? Are they going to be able to save, regardless of whatever exhortation the government lays down?

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Madam Speaker, it is almost a cruel joke that the flip side of this same social policy initiative is the financial literacy leader. On the one hand, the Conservatives are telling Canadians they can no longer retire at age 65 and they are going to have to save more to work longer. However, the only idea they have to assist people with that impossible task is a highly paid bureaucrat who undoubtedly would be some washed-up Tory flack, a failed candidate from the last federal election with no mandate and no particular ability to actually help Canadians cope with the new reality that is being foisted on us.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

Is the House ready for the question?

[Some hon. members]

Question.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

The question is on the motion that the question be now put. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

In my opinion the nays have it.

And five or more members having risen:

[The Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

The vote stands deferred until 5:30 p.m. tomorrow before private member's business.

The House resumed from June 19 consideration of the motion that Bill C-28, An Act to amend the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee, and of the motion that this question be now put.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

The House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the previous question at the second reading of Bill C-28.

(The House divided on the motion, which was agreed to on the following division:)

Vote #449

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

I declare the motion carried.

The next question is on the main motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Gordon O'Connor, Conservative, Carleton—Mississippi Mills, ON]

Madam Speaker, if you seek it, I believe you would find agreement to apply the results of the previous motion to the current motion, with the Conservatives voting yes.

[Nycole Turmel, NDP, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Madam Speaker, we agree with proceeding in this fashion, and the NDP will vote no.

[Judy Foote, Liberal, Random—Burin—St. George's, NL]

Madam Speaker, the Liberals agree and will be voting against.

[Louis Plamondon, Bloc, Bas-Richelieu—Nicolet—Bécancour, QC]

Madam Speaker, the Bloc Québécois is in favour of the motion.

[Bruce Hyer, Independent, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

Madam Speaker, Thunder Bay—Superior North will be voting yes.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, I will be voting yes.

[Peter Goldring, Independent, Edmonton East, AB]

Madam Speaker, I will be voting yes.

[Vic Toews, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Madam Speaker, I was not in attendance at the last vote, but I want to clarify for the record that I will be voting with the Conservative Party on this very important bill.

(The House divided on the motion, which was agreed to on the following division:)

Vote #450

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

I declare the motion carried. Accordingly, the bill stands referred to the Standing Committee on Finance.

(Motion agreed to, bill read the second time and referred to a committee)