Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to all of the witnesses for being here today.
My first questions are for Nancy Wilson. I was listening intently to your opening statement and the challenges that your women entrepreneur members are facing. You went into describing higher fees, unfavourable exchange rates and higher credit card fees. All of these really add to the expenses of small businesses.
Even for myself, when I had a business, we didn't use a customs broker, because we weren't big enough to do that, so the courier companies were the broker. We would put things on our credit card, so you get hit on that side. On the other side, I remember being very shocked looking at the credit card processing fees that we also had because we were a small business.
We know that the Liberal Party of Canada's economic adviser to the Prime Minister, Mark Carney, sits on the board of Stripe. Stripe have said they will not be honouring the credit card fee reduction that will be happening here in Canada.
You represent businesswomen, many of whom are running small businesses. Do you believe that all payment processors should be passing on the savings to businesses?