Thanks very much, Mr. Chair.
I'd just like to reiterate, Ms. Lang, following Elizabeth May's question, that it would be very helpful for us to have the international solutions that other countries have brought to bear, due to what is becoming chronic in Canada. I mean, the level of family debt is unbelievably high. The profits in the banking sector are unbelievably high. I think people make the correlation that it's government policy that is putting this concentration of wealth into a few people's hands. The one per cent, the wealthiest Canadians, have as much of the wealth of the country as the bottom 80%. There's a problem there. Certainly the bottom 20% have barely one per cent of the nation's wealth. That, in a nutshell, is why so many people come to you.
I'm interested in the factors you cited earlier, which were mentioned more anecdotally, it seemed, in terms of the reasons for filing. As I recall, 23% were because of medical reasons, which could be long-term illness or disability, and 15% because of the breakup of a relationship. We all know what a tremendous financial cost that can be for families. Putting those together, 38% or almost 40% of bankruptcies are caused by circumstances beyond control. That is a very interesting fact. We'd appreciate having more information.
The other fact that I think we would love to probe into is the number of consumers who are in high interest rate relationships with their bank, with payday loans or with credit card companies. We really haven't seen the banks adjust their levels at all. In fact, they've reaped $5 billion in profit so far in this pandemic, which many people consider to be despicable. It's supposed to be all hands on deck, rather than profiteering from the immense largesse they've received from the federal government.
Do you have numbers around the percentage of consumers and small businesses that are victims of this high interest rate charge that's based on your credit rating, which really is a way of skimming the public? Certainly, payday loan companies, as you mentioned, with up to 700% interest, are a sad example of that with no government action. Do you have a sense of what consumers and what small businesses are subject to these high interest rates that contribute to their bankruptcy?