Like Peter, I have a bunch of questions as well.
The motion just seems a little incomplete. It uses some terms that I think are vague. I had the same question about open banking meaning different things to different people. I agree.
It sounds like you want to look at both the financial services and how data is dealt with. I don't know if it really falls to the Standing Committee on Finance to look at data. There is a committee of the House, the access to information and privacy committee, which is taken with the issue of social media data and how that's shared on Facebook and other platforms. That committee has more specialty in the privacy of information, how it's dealt with, how it's traded, how it's exchanged between institutions. It's a very broad subject. You could have an entire study just on that particular issue.
With regard to the issue of alternative banking methods, there are also things like Canadian Tire money and institutions that provide points, and how points are monetized and traded. That's an entire kind of rabbit hole that you could go down.
I would like more clarity as to exactly what we mean. Do we mean to make it so broad? It seems like it could be a study forever. I looked at the calendar, and we have about 23 meetings—fewer now—to look at this. I would hope that we don't use up 23 meetings on open banking.
There are a lot of interesting issues that the finance committee could look at. I've given you some ideas. I've tried to table them and suggest studies that the finance committee could have on different subjects. You all know my great interest in the stress test and mortgages and everything related to it. That's much more focused than what I see before me here.
Another part too is that it's big "G" government. It reads, “what steps, if any, the Government”, in general terms, “should take to implement an open banking system”. It seems like a very broad statement.
You also don't say how many meetings you want to spend on this. Do you have an idea, Francesco, of how many meetings should be dedicated to the study? You haven't mentioned whether a report should be written, and whether recommendations should be provided and whether we should compel the government to provide an answer within a fixed amount of time.
I generally don't like open-ended study motions. I could be convinced, obviously, to vote for it, but generally I don't like it. I like studies to be very specific: giving the government a report with recommendations and a fixed timeline by which to respond to them publicly.
If this is an issue that you believe most Canadians are taken with, and especially I think on consumer protection, privacy, the cybersecurity side of things, especially privacy of financial information.... We saw what happened with Statistics Canada and the dragnet of the 1.5 million households who would have their private information tapped into.
Do you see that being part of the study as well? Is Statistics Canada going to be brought before the committee to talk about the pilot projects, or any other such projects that they're thinking about doing? That's the industry committee, then.
What I'm trying to suggest is that the study could go a lot of places.