Thank you.
I'd like to speak very briefly to this to set forth the position of the New Democratic Party.
I want to thank my colleague Mr. Ste-Marie for raising those concerns.
Generally we are very supportive of the concept of open banking, the idea that we want more competition in the financial services sector and the idea that the consumer should be firmly in control of their own data.
To clarify that, data should be made more easily transferable at the direction of the consumer so that the consumer can shift their money, resources and investments around. It is not only good for consumers; I think it will foster greater competition in the markets.
At the same time, I think that Mr. Ste-Marie makes some important points. It does strike me that there's a lot of work to be done in this sector. One thing I'll say is that one of the negative consequences of this committee's spending a lot of time discussing non-essential issues in the last couple of weeks is that it curtailed the amount of time we could have to hear from witnesses. One of the big deficiencies is that we did not hear from the credit union movement outside of Quebec.
I want to thank Mr. Ste-Marie for making sure that we heard from Desjardins, but I'm left wondering what the position of the credit union community is outside of Quebec across the country. We did not have the benefit of their testimony.
I would think that they would be supportive of these because, really, right now, the big five banks have a stranglehold on investments, and the purpose of open banking, which I understand many other countries in the world are ahead of Canada on, is to make sure that people have the ability to move and be in control of their data from the big five banks. I would imagine that the credit union community is in favour of that.
I just want to conclude by saying that I'm sympathetic to the concerns that Mr. Ste-Marie raises, particularly the one about jurisdiction in Quebec. I'm concerned about whether or not we have a fit-for-purpose body to enforce these regulations, but I do think overall that what's more important is to get open banking established in this country.
This may be imperfect. I'm hoping that maybe by the fall economic statement or by the next budget, which will be happening in 10 or 12 months perhaps, we'll have an opportunity to make refinements.
I think that we all here at this table see the benefits of open banking, but we all want to get it right. We will support this attempt to get open banking started with the proviso that there are concerns and issues that I think we're going to have to be revisiting over the next year and years ahead to refine the system to make sure that it works in the way that we all intend it to.
Thank you.