They will be losing money to the other guys and have to go elsewhere for their profits. Service charges are a lucrative aspect and something they could easily introduce.
Let us acknowledge very clearly the debate we are having today. The legislation will go to committee, come back here for debate and off to the Senate. That is essentially meaningless because it is a done deal. The government commitment at the World Trade Organization back in December 1997 was that it would do this. Therefore parliament is irrelevant. Parliamentarians are irrelevant. The finance committee is irrelevant.
Let us consider what we are doing today. We are talking about a major change to Canada's banking. We have just gone through a long process of looking into the future of Canada's financial services sector. A huge report was recently tabled.
The government says it will come out with a white paper to talk about the future of the financial service sector in Canada over maybe the next decade or two or three. Why are we taking this decision today on introducing foreign banking? This seems to be the cart before the horse. The horse is not out of the barn and the cart is already running down the road. There is something wrong with this process.