Good afternoon, and happy financial literacy month.
My name is Brigitte Goulard. I am the deputy commissioner of the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada, and my colleague Richard Bilodeau is the director of our supervision and promotion branch.
Thank you for the invitation. I look forward to providing you with our comments on Bill C-29.
The Financial Consumer Agency of Canada, or FCAC, is a federal government agency responsible for protecting consumers of financial products and services. The agency supervises the practices of banks, federal credit unions, and trust and loan companies. It also develops resources and organizes activities to strengthen the financial literacy of Canadian consumers. Lastly, the agency is mandated to monitor and evaluate trends and emerging issues that may have an impact on consumers of financial products and services.
We monitor external complaints bodies, or ombudsmen, if you will. Every bank and federal credit union must be a member of one of the two approved external complaints bodies.
Consumers who feel that their financial institutions haven't adequately handled a complaint about some banking activities can contact one of these bodies. The representative of one of the two approved bodies, namely, ADR Chambers—Banking Ombuds Office, also appeared before you today.
We also ensure that credit and debit card networks comply with certain business practice requirements to protect merchants. These networks include VISA, MasterCard, American Express and Interac.
FCAC welcomes the new financial consumer protection framework included in Bill C-29. If adopted, it will better protect financial consumers.
We are particularly pleased with the introduction of guiding principles that set out expectations to guide banks' conduct, and will help FCAC interpret and then enforce the legislation. Other enhanced consumer protection measures include improving access to basic banking services by allowing the use of a broader range of personal identification documents to open an account or to cash government cheques.
It also includes strengthening business practices' oversight by introducing a new prohibition on applying undue pressure and by adding cancellation periods to a wider range of products and services. It enhances disclosure of key information by expanding the use of summary boxes of information to all banking products and services. It also enhances transparency by requiring banks and external complaint bodies to report on the nature of complaints received. Finally, it will improve accountability by requiring the banks to report on how they are addressing the principles of the consumer framework and the challenges faced by vulnerable Canadians.
In anticipation of this new consumer framework, FCAC has spent the last year revising its own supervisory framework. I am pleased to announce that our new supervisory framework will be launched in spring 2017.
Three pillars underpin our new supervisory approach. The first pillar focuses on promotion, as FCAC believes that compliance is facilitated when obligations are clearly identified and accessible to regulated entities. Second, FCAC proactively monitors regulated entities to determine whether they are complying with their obligations. FCAC also gathers information on current and emerging issues that impact financial consumers. Finally, FCAC enforces the financial institutions' market conduct obligations. When a potential breach of a compliance obligation is identified, we investigate and take the appropriate action to respond to non-compliance and to deter any further non-compliance.
With this new supervisory framework, we will proactively identify issues in the marketplace and take a more risk-based approach in our supervision and enforcement activities. We believe this approach will better position us to implement the legislative changes proposed in Bill C-29.
To ensure the adoption of the new framework for consumers, FCAC will work closely with stakeholders, including consumers, federally regulated financial institutions and regulators in the provinces and territories. This collaborative approach is at the heart of FCAC's activities and guides all of its activities.
Thank you again for allowing me to meet with you. My colleague and I will be happy to answer your questions.