Exactly.
I will continue where I left off.
I would ask the members of the committee to vote against this entire division.
It is important that the government legislate concerning the open banking system. We have been waiting years for this legislation, because it is necessary. Business is being done without proper legislation.
The time the government has taken to pass legislation is deplorable. The provisions of the budget implementation bill tabled this spring are not definitive. The government tells us that division 16 represents the skeleton, the infrastructure of the law, and all the details will be coming in the fall.
When we look at the skeleton, however, the infrastructure of the framework being proposed, we see that it has major problems in several respects. The government has not done its homework properly. If we adopt this structure, this base for the framework, we will be looking at major problems down the road.
I am asking the government to withdraw division 16, hold consultations, work on this bill over the summer, and come back in the fall with a more complete bill.
This division has multiple problems.
First, the choice to give the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada responsibility for the framework is a serious mistake. The group of agency representatives testified at the committee and demonstrated that they lack both understanding of and familiarity with the open banking system, as well as lacking expertise with that system.
This is not really a criticism, because this is not the fundamental role the agency should be playing. It would be much wiser, for example, to assign the management of this kind of framework to the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, which is already familiar with the ecosystem and the financial institutions, whether under federal or provincial jurisdiction, such as credit unions or the Alberta Treasury Branch financial institution, ATB Financial, which are under provincial jurisdiction.
The body responsible for the framework in the bill has no expertise at present for properly framing the act, and that expertise is not something that can be developed quickly. So there would be constant problems.
Second, the government has decided that management of the framework would be handled solely at the federal level. This would not be a shared jurisdiction in accordance with the division of powers. For example, consumer protection agencies are under provincial jurisdiction. However, under what is proposed in the bill, that would become a federal jurisdiction. Ottawa would be appropriating powers.
The officials clearly gave us to understand that if a financial institution under provincial jurisdiction, such as a financial co‑operative or a credit union, wanted to compete with the Bay Street banks, it would have to ask the province to waive its power to legislate about the open banking system in order for them to be under federal jurisdiction. The provinces will never agree to that. This would mean creating a two-tier open banking system. That would give the Bay Street banks a big advantage and put financial institutions under provincial jurisdiction at a big disadvantage. That is unacceptable.
Is this surprising? No. Every time the Department of Finance passes legislation concerning the banks, it always benefits the Bay Street banks at the expense of the other financial institutions. That is unacceptable. That is what is being proposed holus-bolus in the skeleton, in the structure, in the framework. This fall, it will be very complicated to unravel what is being done here right now.
Third, there are a lot of fuzzy points in the proposed measures, the framework. It will never work properly. Which one, the Autorité des marchés financiers or the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada, will be supervising it? The Financial Consumer Agency of Canada was not even able to answer that question.
We do not have the division of powers. In Quebec, the Consumer Protection Act is subject to the Civil Code, and it has been that way since the conquest. The central government and the Crown have always followed that law. Under what is being proposed, however, they would be exempted from it, and that would lead to very serious problems.
This job has been really badly done.
I am therefore asking the government to remove this division, do its homework, talk to its provincial counterparts, and hold consultations. That way, we would come back this fall with a better bill—in just a few short months from now.
We expected that the industry would be able to regulate, supervise and check what is done in terms of technological standards. However, the standards for the industry are going to be established by the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada. There are serious problems.
Mr. Williams, the member for Bay of Quinte, has done a lot of work in favour of the open financial market. He has actually introduced his own bill, one that my party and I could agree on.
In the case before us, a number of amendments on this subject have been proposed by the Conservatives. I believe this has been done in order to better reflect Mr. Williams' vision. However, all of this rests on a defective framework, a framework that presents significant problems and will never work properly, so I suggest that this division be rejected in its entirety. The same is true for the amendments, because the base will never work.
Colleagues, if we pass this division as it stands or is amended by the proposed amendments, there will be problems and discord and discontent. The regulatory body will not have the expertise it needs to do its work properly. We are going to have problems if there is a two-tier financial system. We are also going to have to backpedal in the fall or later.
If we reject this division and ask the government to redo its homework over the summer, we will avoid a lot of problems. Otherwise, there are going to be problems throughout the process until we end up backpedalling.
I therefore invite my colleagues to vote against this clause and all the clauses in division 16, out of respect for credit unions, financial co‑operatives and provincial jurisdictions and a concern for efficiency. That will mean we get a competent regulatory body that does not have to learn it all—it will take years to learn it all—and is able to talk to the agents, the actors on the ground.
I understand that the financial technology industry wants us to go fast. This has been dragging on for years, and we have to act. If we pass what we have before us, however, it will not be in place any faster. We will have to wait until the fall.
We should introduce a more complete and more serious bill in the fall, and send division 16 back to the government.
Mr. Chair, I request a roll-call vote on all of the clauses in this division.