Mr. Speaker, the proposed bank merger points to a revealing similarity between the Liberals and the Reform Party.
The Reform Party says that the merger would be okay as long as the American banks are given a larger role in the Canadian economy. This is precisely what the Liberals have already provided for by signing, days before merger talks began, the financial services agreement at the World Trade Organization.
Indeed the Minister of Finance's outrage about the merger is just so much play acting. Does the minister really expect us to believe that his departmental advice was so bad that he did not anticipate that mergers might be part of the banks' response to the agreement that he signed?
Canadians do not have to choose between the fraudulent outrage of the Liberals and the spectacle of the Reform Party's arms opened wide to the embrace of American banks.
The NDP stands for a world in which banks are answerable to the well-being of all rather than being further freed up to serve their own selfish interests. Let us make Canadian banks behave as good corporate citizens and let American banks stay at tome.
One is reminded of the drug patent issue: much Liberal outrage and then its members hide behind an agreement that they themselves signed.