Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the member for Kings—Hants for his excellent speech which in comparison to the New Democratic MP who preceded him was a full glass of thought versus an empty glass.
I draw attention to one item in his speech. He commented that in the United States banks much more aggressively chase small business. I suggest to him that part of this is because in the United States there is a whole galaxy of small banks. There is tremendous cutthroat competition and there are a great many failures in the United States banking system because there are so many small banks.
As he said, we enjoy because of our five banks much greater security in the banking system. The price we pay is less aggressiveness in terms of providing a competitive environment for getting the business of small business.
Given that we have five large banks that should be competing for the small business and yet we feel they are not, not effectively, what makes him certain, and maybe he is not certain, these new foreign bank branches will competitively go after small business? Are the competitive incentives there?