Madam Speaker, I rise to say a few words about a question I had asked in the House back on December 2 of the last millennium to do with the banks. In 1999 the banks in this country made $9 billion in profits. I am concerned about what the government will do to protect jobs in the banking industry and ensure branches are not needlessly closed in many communities around this country. Banks are announcing the closure of branches in various parts of Canada and many people are being thrown out of work.
I was also concerned that despite these huge profits, we are seeing closures and a lot of the profits are going to the highly paid chief executive officers of the banks. The 24 top CEOs of the banks in this country received remuneration in excess last year of $250 million. That is 24 people and $250 million, equivalent to the salaries of some 12,000 bank tellers. This tells us the priorities of the banks.
The Secretary of State for International Financial Institutions responded to a question, but I thought his answer could have been a bit more forthcoming in terms of what he said. The main issue is to protect the jobs of the people who are working in our banks and to protect the communities that are served by some of these banks.
I am fairly pleased with the Bank of Montreal in my province of Saskatchewan and in the province of Alberta. The Bank of Montreal announced a month ago that it was going to close over 30 branches. This was going to be done by selling the branches to the local credit union.
In Saskatchewan some 17 Bank of Montreal branches in small towns and villages in the main park have been sold to 15 credit unions. These credit unions will expand by using some of the customer base of the Bank of Montreal. In two of these communities a Bank of Montreal building will be renovated and changed into a credit union. In the other case two of them will be amalgamated into one. The people in these communities will have service available to the community.
There are 63 people working in these 17 branches of the Bank of Montreal. As part of the agreement for buying this business, the credit union will offer employment to each and every one of these 63 people. They will now be working for a credit union or in some cases taking early retirement.
Some of these branches are very small. One only has one employee. But the fact that it is small does not mean it is not an important institution to a lot of people in a small rural town. This is a move in the right direction.
I would like to see leadership from the government to make sure that when the other banks decide to close branches, there will be some service to the people in those communities. Maybe we should look at what the United States has done. It has a community reinvestment act which gives some power to direct some of the funds which banks raise in communities right back into the communities and indeed in some places, there is some power given to the community to try to prevent the closure of a bank which is serving people in a particular area. This is very important.
Also important is the protection of jobs of the people who work in the financial services industry. This is also very important.
The banks can afford to be more generous and more flexible. They can afford to concentrate more on service. They made $9 billion in profits last year and those profits are still coming in very nicely. The CIBC just announced that in its first quarter the results are anticipated to be about 25% to 30% better than it had expected. The TD bank has said that its earnings are up by 42% from last year.