Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to stand this morning to debate report stage of Bill C-53. I certainly had some things to say about this bill, but I now have much more since hearing the last couple of speakers.
I would like to start by addressing a comment made by the hon. member for Broadview—Greenwood that Reform supports bank mergers. The reason we have trouble having meaningful debate in this House is because hon. members across the way and sometimes down the way like to take the smallest grain of truth and twist it, distort it and re-organize it until it says something completely different than what it was clearly intended to say.
I will give them the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps instead of deliberately misrepresenting it they are just sort of buried under by the bull that comes from their own side and consequently they make an honest mistake.
The hon. member put out a blanket statement that Reform supports bank mergers. What he forgets is that there was a long, long caveat involved. We said that if the banks opened themselves to more competition and showed that there would be benefits for small business and other people, then we were prepared to look at it.
How he got from that position to the blanket statement that we support bank mergers defies imagination.