The Criminal Code sets a criminal rate of interest for payday lenders. Any of the regulatory frameworks being proposed by provinces like Manitoba will in fact require a way to compute the rate of interest, along with all the other administrative fees, which could end up being more than the criminal rate of interest in the code. In fact that's one of the problems that we face right now: the criminal rate of interest in the code can mean nothing when these payday lenders can in fact find ways to add all kinds of administrative and other charges to the actual loan, making the interest rate somewhere in the neighbourhood of over 1,000%. So in order to have a reasonable scheme, we need that exemption from the Criminal Code to address that concern.
On June 19th, 2006. See this statement in context.