Mr. Speaker, once again the member for Winnipeg—Transcona has asked the kind of intelligent, thoughtful and probing questions we do not hear enough of in the House. My friend asked me to give a short history lesson.
People who read the Wall Street Journal would have noticed on November 10, 1997 a small article stating that Canada would be submitting a revised offer on that day committing itself to open branched banking to other WTO members. We were perplexed by this because we had not heard about the government negotiating WTO's openness for foreign banking. There had been discussions of foreign banking but we thought it would wait until the finance committee report was submitted to the House and until other reports underway had been completed.
We were perplexed so we made some inquiries in the House. We found out that the government had been negotiating changes to the financial services act for some time, that it had been negotiating the best way to open up Canada to foreign banks. This made everybody's ears perk up.
On December 12 we got an elaborate news release stating that Canada was now welcoming the WTO financial services agreement which would open up Canada to foreign banks and foreign insurance companies. There was no debate here, not even a ministerial statement. Unless we had the inside track through the office of the Minister of Finance, there would be no way the ordinary citizen even knew this was taking place until it was announced. Was it announced in the House of Commons? No. That would be the last place. It was announced in the national press theatre. That is where the announcements are. Why would you make an announcement in such an irrelevant place? It feeds into this cynicism.
As my friend said, then the banks came out with their notice. They said if the Government of Canada has just allowed the floodgates to be open for foreign banks, they have to do something and they have been thinking about a merger so they will announce their intention to look at merging.
We see the sequence. I add one more element to what I said earlier. Now that the foreign banks are coming in, and the biggest foreign banks now have access to Canada, we will soon hear a case to lower the 10% ownership level for our banking system. Then we will see more bank mergers announced because we will have no choice under the WTO.