That's a great point. They're a government-protected oligopoly, and with that protection come responsibilities. Perhaps it would be different if it were a free and open market in financial services.
Mr. Chair, I would like to resume the debate, if I could, with apologies to the witnesses, on my production order motion for Mastercard.
Members will recall that I moved a motion earlier in this study:
That the committee order the production of all documents, emails, memos and any materials related to the Liberal government's $50-million handout...to Mastercard, including all communications between ISED, PCO or PMO and Mastercard regarding the grant; and that the committee report to the House to express its concern regarding the value for money for taxpayers on the nearly $50 million taxpayer dollars given to Mastercard by the Trudeau Liberal government.
The reason for that is that we learned in this study that they had about $25 billion or $26 billion of global revenue and $11 billion of gross operating income, yet they were willing to take $50 million from Canadian taxpayers to set up a cybersecurity centre, which is sort of the ante at a poker game. If you're going to be in the credit card business, you'd better be very careful on security and cybersecurity. They seemed shocked at the time, at the beginning of this study, that somebody would actually question them. I asked them if they would pay it back, since they don't seem to really need the money, and they baffled, skated and did all the things that a global company like that would do.
I would propose again that we could expedite this if we voted on it quickly. We could move on.