Madam Speaker, I cannot speak for the finance minister on the question of mergers. We have spoken. In my November 1998 report “Competition: Choice you can bank on” we clearly said that given a far more competitive environment in Canada among the financial industries it would be possible to look at the mergers in a totally new light.
The finance minister would not be well served to make a trade off deal. I am not sure if he did. I do not think so. I think he realizes there is a lot of steps to be taken before he can talk about the merger issue again.
However, as we talk about the banking industry and the possibility of mergers in the House, all over the world major banks are repositioning themselves and restructuring to become bigger and stronger so that they can be leaders in the global marketplace.
We in Canada must recognize it is important to get some changes made to the industry to create a more competitive environment so that our banks will also be able to put forward a reasonable merger proposal. We in parliament can then have a look at it. If it meets all the criteria we expect from our industry then possibly those would be the steps to be taken so that our banks could compete in the global economy. It is important to Canada's economy that we have very strong world banks.