First of all, Chair, with regard to my colleagues' comments, in the procedure of the House of Commons, we can ask for the production of anything. We are supreme in the body of doing that.
Colleagues, for the record, I'd just like to say this. I agree, particularly as a Conservative.... I support private industry doing private things. The reality is this company now has a board member who is running for the leadership of the Liberal Party while acting as an economic adviser and we now have a material.... Their company rep just said that they were lobbying on this issue.
The federal government has not put in place any screens for Mr. Carney; the company has said they have not put in any screens for Mr. Carney, and now the company is saying, “Well, we don't know. Maybe there is a board issue, maybe there's not. We're not entirely clear.” I think it does behoove our committee to get to the bottom of this.
I also think that it would probably behoove this committee to refer this matter to the lobbying commissioner at some point. I would support my colleague's amendment to look at this matter in private .
It's actually patently ridiculous. We have a company that has this type of an in to the Prime Minister's Office and the finance minister's office and is not passing the savings along to small businesses. It's preposterous. Of course, we should be looking to see if this company is saying what they're saying and getting to the bottom of this.
I'm actually flabbergasted, to be honest with you, especially when they said that they couldn't disclose the volume of transactions that went on standard pricing versus interchange-plus pricing and then try to sell us a bill of goods like it's been passed along.