Yes. Thank you, Madam Chair.
The amendment refers to the section of the Bank Act concerning funds deposited by cheque.
I know that you're quite interested in and passionate about this topic, Madam Chair. As you know, when a person deposits a cheque in Canada, the bank can freeze the cheque. The bank can't freeze cheques below a certain amount. This stems somewhat from the fact that people may deposit a cheque in an emergency and may need the funds.
At the same time, we need to also mitigate the risk of fraud for a bank. We can't force banks to accept a $100,000 cheque and to allow people to withdraw the funds.
The Bank Act currently sets this amount at $100. A person who deposits a cheque for $100 or less can withdraw the money immediately. Obviously, the act doesn't automatically index this amount. The legislator needs to update it.
We're proposing that this amount be raised to $250. I'll tell you the reason. It's simply because a small family pays this amount for groceries. It's all well and good to address the cost of living, to provide benefits and even to send out benefit cheques. You know, the government wants to send out benefit cheques. However, if we want to remain consistent, we must make sure that people can withdraw the funds immediately.
Obviously, we believe that the banking system faces a relatively low risk in this situation. The amount concerned hasn't been indexed for some time, as I said.
I would like to invite all my colleagues, once again, to adopt this measure. It benefits households, families and people who are struggling to make ends meet and who don't have the time to wait for their bank before withdrawing money. Moreover, as we all know, banks freeze money for fairly long periods, sometimes up to 10 working days, or even two weeks. Yet we know very well that the banking system clears these cheques the same night in about 99.9% of cases. Once the cheque is deposited, the bank knows that the funds exist, but the funds are frozen.
This is partly because we have a largely monopolistic banking system. We have five major banks that basically take over the whole market. We need to regulate this sector. It's an uncompetitive and unregulated sector.
I think that this measure makes perfect sense.