Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's a pleasure to be back, and thank you to the committee for inviting us to appear today.
We've appeared many times before the committee, but I might take just a moment to introduce Retail Council again to the committee.
Retail Council is the voice of retail in Canada. We represent, from coast to coast, all the various different formats, specialties, and types of retailers in the trade. Our members sell almost $400 billion a year, they employ almost two million people, and they operate their businesses out of almost a quarter of a million establishments. So we're a big business marked primarily by small individual enterprises. So it's kind of a conundrum: a large business with a lot of small businesses within it.
Mr. Chairman, I would like to point out that you have received our brief in advance. I also want to mention that my remarks will focus on three key points: why an ABM is installed in a store; our views on ABM user fees; and finally, the need to review the entire payment system in Canada.
Let me start first of all with the business case for ABMs in stores.
They were initially offered by retailers when the opportunity became available after the 1996 decision. What we have found is that today for most store formats and for most product categories, there simply is no business case for installing an ABM in the store. The reasons for this are laid out in the submission that we provided in advance.
What we do see is that cash-dispensing automatic bank machines are most commonly found in a few types of specialized locations—