Mr. Speaker, one of my real concerns about the bill before the House today is the change in the wide ownership rule. The government is now proposing we go from 10% of the shares being held by any one individual to 20% for voting shares and 30% for non-voting shares.
We have already sold out or given up so much of our country, it seems to me that if we change the wide ownership rule we will be inviting more concentration on the banking industry and more foreign ownership of the banking industry. In essence, a couple of billionaires could control a big national bank.
I talked to some people in my home city of Regina over the last couple of days who were also concerned about losing one of these last industries that really control the country.
So much has changed with the free trade agreement. This is one of the few that is still left. The other concern I have is that the government is now proposing to treat medium sized banks and large banks differently. For large banks a foreigner, a wealthy individual or an institution could buy up to 20% of the shares. For a medium sized bank, a bank with between $1 billion and $5 billion in equity, a single person could purchase 65% of the shares. In other words, the Banque Nationale in Quebec could be purchased by the Chase Manhattan or by anybody else and suddenly that bank would be out of the province of Quebec and out of the country. With its headquarters gone jobs would be gone. We would lose a very important part of our country.
I want to ask my friend from Nova Scotia whether he shares these points of view. They are really two different questions in terms of the threshold rising and in terms of treating the three medium sized banks differently. It is not just the Banque Nationale, it is also the Laurentian Bank and the Bank of Western Canada.
For smaller banks, banks with an equity of less than $1 billion, there are no rules or restrictions at all. They can be owned by anyone, a foreigner or a Canadian. There is a difference there as well.
Those are the concerns I have in terms of the wide ownership rule and losing something that we have as Canadians, something that we have regulated and made work to a pretty decent degree over the years. I am concerned that with the lack of debate going on in the House it will be be hard to mobilize public opinion to put pressure on the government.
Liberal members are not even participating in this debate. The minister spoke for about 12 minutes and that was it. The official opposition spoke for a few minutes by putting up one speaker and that was it. They are not even rising on questions and comments when we are debating a very important issue.
This is a bill that is over 900 pages in length, a bill that affects many other pieces of legislation. This is not just 900 pages, but the consequential changes in other legislation amounts to another 4,000 pages of legislation as well. Much of this will be done by order in council, by memorandums of understanding and by guidelines. The minister will have tremendous power in terms of being a banking czar.
Those are the concerns that a lot of us have. I hope we can engage some of the members across the way in this debate. It is a very important issue. They talked a lot during the bank merger campaign in 1998-99 about changing the rules and putting more power back into parliament and giving less power to the bureaucrats and the minister and here is their chance to do that. Let us have some real engagement in this debate.