Mr. Ciappara, I'd like to come back to you, if I may.
Just for background, I spent some time working for the Bank of Nova Scotia as a commercial banker. I used to be a management consultant with PCG and did a lot of consulting in the financial services sector. I heard your earlier point about sector-specific taxation and your concern about that. The challenge I have is the following one.
The Canadian banking sector is, to a great degree, in my view—for a bunch of reasons—relatively protected, from foreign competition especially. I believe there is inadequate competition in a number of sectors in this country. Banking is one of them. Telecoms and airlines are others. The consequence of that, for me, is that consumers pay higher prices than they would otherwise, the quality of service is less than it would be otherwise and the array of financial products available to businesses and consumers is less than it would be otherwise.
Therefore, there's a cost to be borne by our economy and our society for that lack of competition. When I think about the financing that a lot of companies need at the early stages of development, it's tougher to get it from the Canadian financial sector. There are a bunch of reasons, but I think competition would probably help alleviate some of that problem.
I guess my question to you is this: If your argument is that we shouldn't have sector-specific taxation, are you in favour of greater competition in the banking sector in Canada?