I prefer a process where the complainant—who's gone through the regular internal complaints process of the chartered bank—then picks an external one, as opposed to the process that exists today where the chartered bank has already pre-selected someone that they do business with, so it goes there. It seems awkward to me that when you've gotten to the level of a customer being really unhappy with the service they've received from their service provider—in this case the chartered bank—you're then told the chartered bank has already pre-selected someone who will hear the complaint. If I could make the comparison, it's like when you're bargaining with your employer and the employer has already pre-selected the mediator ahead of time. Maybe there are lots of rules in place on how the mediator is supposed to do their work, but.... It's not bad faith; it just seems like a wrong process.
I have this constituent. I spoke to her on the phone last week because I knew this section was going to come up on the BIA. You haven't given me much to go on that this would actually improve the process. There's so little to amend here inside these sections of the BIA to improve that situation.
It's something that the government should really think about. The complainant should control where it goes, not the banks. That would be much fairer to the individual who feels aggrieved and is dissatisfied with the service they've received from their chartered bank, so they can find some type of redress. At that point, maybe it's impossible. Maybe you just have people who go through the process and nothing will satisfy them anymore, but they should be the ones in control of their complaint. I don't think there's an opportunity here to really fix it because again there's so little in this BIA. You could have added a couple more pages to the BIA, and maybe given us an opportunity to fix it a little more here.
Make it bigger. Mr. Chair, that's a great idea. Maybe I can recommend to the minister, if and when he ever appears here again, that this would be a particular section where complainants could have their justice by not having the banks pick their external reviewer.