Madam Speaker, would my friend in the Conservative Party agree with me that there should not be a change in the wide ownership rule?
For many years we had regulations brought in by the Pearson Liberals which stated that a person could own no more than 10% of the shares of any bank. That was done to protect the Canadian banking industry, to keep it Canadian. At one time there was a rule that said no more than 25% of the shares could be owned by foreigners. That rule went by the wayside during free trade.
That will be changed. It will be moved from 10% to 20% of voting shares and 10% to 30% of non-voting shares for big banks with equity of more than $5 billion a year.
Medium size banks are defined as banks with between $1 billion and $5 billion in equities per year. There is concern in the province of Quebec that the National Bank will come under different rules. In terms of medium size banks the rules indicate that only 35% is to be widely held. In other words, somebody could buy 65% of the Banque Nationale. The member mentioned ING Direct, Citibank or Chase Manhattan which could go in there and buy the Banque Nationale, the Laurentian Bank or the Bank of Western Canada.
Would he agree that the same rules should apply to medium size banks in terms of being widely held as applied to the large banks? Does he also agree that going to 20% opens the door to more foreign control influence in our banking system, something that now is truly Canadian?
The Alliance is not participating in this debate so I ask the more progressive of the two conservative parties in the House to respond to that.