Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I'm going to reference the same January 2000 article that my colleague referenced earlier. A postscript to the article reads: “It hasn't happened, but someday you just might find an additional surcharge whenever you use any bank machine but your own”. So about seven years later, we see that actually has happened, and there is a fee that's charged whenever you use any bank machine other than your own.
My urban colleagues on my left and right are going to shut down here for a second, but I'm going to use a bit of a farm analogy.
On the farm, we'll string up an electric fence that keeps a cow in the field so it doesn't go into an adjacent field. I think we could actually draw a bit of a parallel and say the banks are putting up a bit of a fence around their own customers, and that there is a bit of protectionism in saying, “If you use our machines, we won't charge you; if you use anyone else's, we'll hit you for it”, as a customer retention method.
There are six major chartered banks in Canada. I understand you don't want foreign competition coming in and eating up your market share. You don't want near-banks, you don't want credit unions coming in and competing on the same level as you have. Perhaps you have additional costs and so forth. But amongst the six major chartered banks, would you consider an agreement whereby you wouldn't charge another bank's customers for use at your own ABMs?
Mr. Hockey, would you like to answer that? Would you consider that?