I'm going to start not with a rejection, but maybe a reply, to some of the points that Mr. Fragiskatos raised. I'll maybe deal with one point first, something that Fergus had said before. I just quickly went to look at the money laundering act study and how that committee considered during its travels—it says here that, “with respect to the Committee's travels from 1 to 8 June 2018, various witnesses testified to the Committee under Chatham House rules to encourage openness and the frank sharing of information. The testimony of these witnesses is therefore presented in this report in a manner that does not identify the source of the testimony.” However, in that scenario, we also don't have the content of what was said.
I love Chatham House rules. I'm all for them. I know the United Kingdom uses them much more than we do here. There's a loss there for the public to be able to see what was said in a transcript format like this. There's a time for in camera and there's a time for Chatham House rules, but there is also a time for members of the public to be able to see what is said back and forth in the conversations and the dialogue being had with witnesses, and between members too. I am hoping that what they will see here today is that this is not a very partisan disagreement. We're not squabbling. We're behaving like adults who are just having a difference of opinion on policy issues, which I think is exactly what we were sent here by constituents to do. We're here to have those frank conversations.
To the points Mr. Fragiskatos raised that there are other committees—just in general without going into any specifics, but just in general—of the House of Commons that could take up specific parts of this study, I would note that it's just like there is another advisory group set up by the Government of Canada that has already reported to the Minister of Finance or concluded its open public consultation, rather, and has heard from expert witnesses. They are also duplicating it.
That work has been done by a government committee, and now, that other place, the Senate is considering taking up the issue as well to do the exact same study that is being proposed here. I am concerned that we're duplicating, unless we make it far more specific to the points I'm trying to raise here, because I don't think the Senate motion will be as specific. I also don't think that the advisory group of the government, looking at the mandate they were given, were as specific as perhaps we could be, if we adopt my amendment.
If other committees can do it too, why don't we ask members of those committees to take up portions of it? I actually think everything here is relevant to our committee, so to those first two points, that (a) and (b) could be done by—and Public Safety is perhaps considering a study on cybersecurity.
In the original motion, there's already a mention of cyber security, so if it chooses to pass the original motion with amendments or no amendments, it's already considering cybersecurity, which is something a member has now expressed might be duplication. We're already going to be engaging in duplication with what perhaps the Public Safety committee will do.
I think the difference will be that, if you adopt a) and b), our specificity would be around finance and financial and consumer data and how it's being treated by financial institutions, which is the purview of this committee. It should be perfectly reasonable for us to look at the regulators that answer to the ministry of finance and what types of rules they set in place and how they're impacting the potential distribution or operation of open banking in Canada. I think that's very important. It's very reasonable for us to be looking at it.
The focus that the public safety committee might have is much more around counter-terrorism, national security and perhaps the integrity of Correctional Services and the public safety bodies, like the RCMP or the Canada Border Services Agency. Perhaps that would be their focus on the cybersecurity there.
Again, our focus would be much more about current data security risks and threats posed by domestic and foreign actors or private data information of Canadians. We'd focus on financial data and financial information, which is information that Canadians feel very strongly about being protected, and we saw that last November when Statistics Canada came out and said that it was going to collect and had already started a pilot project that's now been suspended, but had started to collect the banking information of potentially of up to 1.5 million Canadians. That's five hundred thousand households and 1.5 million Canadians.
I think it's perfectly reasonable for this committee to then look at cybersecurity of Canadians' private banking information. Regarding banking information, from the conversations I've had with constituents, they feel the same way about their medical information as they do about their banking information. They don't want the Government of Canada or the Parliament of Canada to be nosing around their purchases, what they're buying and what they're returning, what's on their credit cards, and their financial practices. I think it's perfectly reasonable.
With regard to “b) how best the government can ameliorate such risks and threats posed to the private data of Canadians”, again, the focus is financial information within the context of open banking. If we are proposing that open banking be made the standard in Canada or be made available as the default setting, and it empowers consumers to then share their data, it will involve things like: How long are they sharing it for? Once they agree to share it with one financial institution, do they share it with more than one? Are they agreeing to a lifetime of access to their private information, or are they not? Those are all financial, Finance Canada-related regulatory questions that this committee could look at.
On that point, I'll have to disagree with Mr. Fragiskatos. It's in the original motion as well. Cybersecurity, privacy, financial stability and consumer protection are there. The context of what we're trying to get at is clear.
There is also:
f) how the development of new Canadian fintech innovation has been advanced or curtailed by broader government policies including, but not limited to; the levels of taxation imposed on small and medium sized enterprises, corporate welfare, payroll taxes, openness to foreign direct investment, and the retention of skilled labour;
It was mentioned that this, perhaps, is a better study for the industry committee. Fintech is the leading edge of what most of the chartered banks and what most financial institutions in Canada are trying to be involved in. That is a purview of this committee.
Oftentimes I hear constituents accuse the government and parliamentarians of being siloed, of only looking at one specific area, of keeping their comments very specific and of ignoring the broader construct, what's happening in broader society. Too often we make policy decisions or we approve of policy decisions in a silo, without looking at everything else that's going around. I don't know how we could undertake an open banking study without taking a look at the impact on payroll taxes, on FDI, on what would happen to small and medium-sized businesses, and on the retention of skilled labour.
There, I think, the point becomes this: You have a bank, Motusbank, which is the one I was offering up, being started by Meridian Credit Union. It's proposing to not have any physical branches. If open banking is the future and the physical branch location will be less and less necessary and eliminated, and if the government proceeds with confirming that, yes, open banking is the direction it would like the banking system to go, that's a huge impact on all the skilled labour working there. All the employees of all those financial institutions may find that, over time, the location they're working at is not necessary, so they may not need to be there, but a number of them may not be necessary anymore. I don't know how we can look at open banking without looking at the jobs impact it will have, broadly, across all financial institutions.
We don't need to be very specific, but I think we should be conscious of the impact that it will have on Canadians and then the impact that this would have on taxation revenue and on small and medium-sized businesses.
When I travelled with a different committee that was doing a review of Canada Post's mandate, I heard time and time again about banks' leaving smaller communities and about its being increasingly difficult to do simple things like just taking cash to your deposit box and making sure that, at the end of the day, all the cash you may have on hand is not left inside your business. That cash box at the local bank was not necessarily available anymore.
With regard to remote communities, I can't think of anything more concerning than the lack of that ability to safely deposit any cash you might receive. On the flip side, too, in remote communities with good access to the Internet and with access to online open banking, what's the opportunity, then, for people to pick it up? Those two are really important points. What will be the mix? What will be the opportunities gained and the losses received from it?
I represent a large urban area. I can tell you that, for my area, the number one concern would be job losses at banking institutions, credit unions and others. I can see that already. If branches are going to close because they're no longer necessary and everything is going to be on these cell phone devices, then I can see that the impact will be this loss of jobs. I think we should seriously consider this. I'm not saying that it's necessarily a negative. Perhaps there are positive things in there, too. People will go and, perhaps, start their own smaller financial institutions.
Again, fintech is not just an industry matter. It's a finance matter because it will have an impact on public revenue and on jobs. We should not limit ourselves to just looking at the silo.
Moving on to the last point that was made about public accounts, point (j) states:
j) how the principle of financial transparency latent in the idea of open banking ought to be applied more broadly to the public accounts of the Canadian government;
Again, the public accounts committee exists because there's a public accounts document that's tabled in October. It's made public. That's the document where you can see line-by-line every dollar that is spent by the Government of Canada. If you're ever curious how many cellphones were lost by the public service, and how many new ones it needed to buy by department, there will be a line item for that. The documents are extensive and exhaustive in the information they provide. They're a great document for any parliamentarian to review, but they're exceedingly long.
My point in (j) is not to say that we should look at the public accounts. My point, in general, is to determine how we do our public accounting, how we account for the money spent, because these are taxpayer dollars being spent. If open banking is to be the way we do it for financial institutions, how about if the Government of Canada did a little bit of it itself with the accounts that it holds on behalf of Canadians?
It would be nice if the government was more leading-edge on technology. Things move slowly here. Some members have been here much longer than I have, and have seen things move at a different pace, but business moves at a much faster one. It would be interesting to at least consider allowing Canadians to have live access to their CPP accounts, if they could actually see live, on an app or something, what their opportunities are, and if they were willing to share that information with the bank, or perhaps make retirement planning.
The government makes that information available to financial institutions on a client basis, so the client, the consumer, controls that information and says, “I'm planning for my retirement. I don't want to call the CPP office. Can't I just consent to that information being shared with my financial institution, so I can do my financial planning?” That's what I'm trying to get at here.
It would be also interesting to see if people could plan ahead with their taxes when they reach the age of retirement or they take early retirement. Those are all, again, related back to how the government does accounting on its side. The government has EI, the government has lots of different accounts that Canadians take advantage of or use. It's a benefit oftentimes that they've paid into. It would be interesting to see whether there would be a way for us to exercise financial transparency on the government.
Again, those public accounts documents are not easy documents for my constituents. I haven't had any so far come to me and say they've read the public accounts, and were be able to explain how dollars were spent by the Government of Canada. Why not apply some of those principles of financial transparency? What we hear at the committee level is people telling the government, “You know, we'd like you to proceed with open banking, we see lots of opportunities.”
But in government operations, in the way you respond not only to the concerns of Canadians but also with accounts that you hold under registered accounts, for example, RRSPs, RESPs and RDSPs, is there an opportunity there to provide Canadians more of that financial information without their having to call another body or another organization?
Could they consent to information being shared ahead of time that's for their benefit? They could retract their consent, and hopefully that's something the government will consider. We want to say we're going to empower Canadians with financial information that the Government of Canada holds, or accounts it holds on their behalf, that they would be able to share.
It's not an issue of the public accounts committee. The public accounts committee looks at how the government has spent money; it considers the Auditor General's report. It's about transparency. It's making sure that line items are clear.
I'm running dry.
It's making sure the line items are—