Mr. Speaker, more and more Canadians are asking why the Liberal government will not agree to all party meetings on the proposed bank mergers.
On May 7 I pointed to recent U.S. evidence on the behaviour of big American banks toward small business, evidence that was being presented to a bipartisan congressional committee in the U.S. House of Representatives studying their proposed bank mergers.
The evidence showed in the U.S. four things: big banks make fewer loans to small business, big banks lend more money to bigger business, the bigger the bank the smaller their small business loan portfolio, and big bank service charges are at least 15% higher.
Moreover a Wall Street Journal analysis found that small business lending declined in the U.S. banks which merged but went up in their non-merged competitors over the same period.
Canadians want to know why American legislators can study proposed bank mergers in their country while the Liberals reject all party hearings on the proposed bank mergers in Canada. Why can the U.S., the birthplace of modern capitalism, strike an all party inquiry into bank mergers and their impact on Americans but the Liberal government turns a blind eye? Is it because the Liberals are protecting their friends, or is it because they support the mergers?
Recently I proposed that the industry committee hold hearings on the impact of the bank mergers on small business, consumers and rural Canada. The Liberal majority on that committee voted it down.
Here is what the Liberals want to do instead. They have appointed a Liberal dominated task force, the so-called MacKay task force, but this task force is not mandated to look into bank merger proposals or lost jobs or service charges for consumers, business and farmers. Three of its members have already had to resign because of a conflict of interest. They were employees of the banks that want to merge.
The government has set up a committee of Liberal backbenchers to study the bank mergers as well. They get to stand up and say they care while they play both sides against the middle. There is only one problem. The hepatitis C vote showed us all how much Liberal backbenchers and their points of view count for in the government.
At the end of the day they can produce their report but it will not matter a bit to the Prime Minister or the finance minister because they will make whatever decision they will make regardless of what the Liberal backbenchers recommend. The backbenchers will be told to fall into line and history shows they will to the last MP.
Why does the government not want all party hearings now? Would not the recommendations of an all party committee have much more credibility than what we would get from Liberals alone? Are the Liberals buying time for the bankers association's million dollar PR campaign to soften people up and allow the banks to persuade Canadians that bank mergers are inevitable anyway? The CBA is spending millions of dollars on TV ads and the individual banks are spending millions on lobbyists.
No, the Liberals want to wait until the fall, wait until they get their marching orders from the blue ribbon panel, throw a bone or two to their backbenchers, and only then will they allow the finance committee of the House of Commons to conduct a study which will be the equivalent of closing the barn door after the horses have left.
Who will benefit from the bank mergers and who will suffer? Bank CEO's stock options whose value goes up every time the market goes up on the excitement of all this merger mania will benefit to the tune of millions of dollars. The figure I would like to see is the comparison between the total increased value of these stock options and the payroll savings the banks will be making after they downsize their merged workforce.
How many jobs will be lost and where will these jobs be lost? Small business is very worried about the future of banking sector. Small business representatives have a lot of questions about the mergers themselves as do farmers and other consumers in other parts of Canada including rural Canada.
These are the kinds of questions we believe an all party committee could effectively study now. That is why we are calling upon the Liberal government to strike an all party committee to review the bank mergers immediately.