Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I would disagree with Mr. Kmiec on expanding the BIA, but I think I would agree with him in terms of separating this legislation out. That's really what we needed. I think that's the direction he's heading in. All of these stand-alone pieces of legislation that have been dumped into this monster bill could have been improved if we'd actually had a legitimate legislative process rather than this legislative bulldozer that is giving us a deeply flawed bill that will be subject to court challenge at the end of the day.
In a sense, each one of us is also racing against time, because in a few hours' time the clock stops by this bulldozing arrangement that the Liberal government's brought in. When that clock stops, everything's adopted automatically—everything. No amendment is permitted.
We're kind of racing against time, for folks who might be tuning in. They see us approving clauses because we have to get at least to the amendments and we try to identify the most important amendments and the most egregious flaws in the legislation.
Here is a case where the legislation is not expansive enough. The amendment is endeavouring to fix something that should have been offered as a separate standing piece of legislation.
I'm not suggesting that this particular part of legislation is any more flawed than other parts of legislation. I think it can be improved by saying very clearly that there's only one external complaints body. That certainly responds to what we heard, as you remember, Mr. Chair, during the pre-budget hearings, as well. There were a number of witnesses who came forward and told all of us that we needed to stop the process that Mr. Kmiec has just referred to, where the bank chooses who is going to decide on the consumer complaint. That's not consumer protection. That's forcing the consumers to accept whatever it is the bank's going to give them. That's unfair to Canadians.
I get a lot of complaints in my riding about bank practices. To allow the banks to get off the hook and have their own complaint process where they choose in advance the body that is going to adjudicate on their behalf is simply unfair to consumers.
Allowing these two amendments—because really we need to speak to them together—that provide for a minister to designate one single, external complaints body makes a whole lot of sense. First, that will allow the public to see that the legislation reflects their interests, at least this part of it. Secondly, we could then have the minister actually move to designate and set up a complaints process that's really in the consumers' interest.