Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the speech. I have a lot of sympathy for what she is saying. There are a certain number of people in our society who do not have big bank accounts and who simply need the basic banking services in order to cash a cheque. Sometimes it is a welfare cheque or payment for work. All they need is the ability to cash the cheque. I agree with her that it should be available.
However, to say that banks be forced to keep a whole branch open in order to provide that service is perhaps stretching it. For example, she said that banking services are a right. A lot of us think access to food is a right. We do not want to have our Canadian citizens starving to death.
Would we then pass a law that states that grocery stores must stay open in a community whether they continue to lose money year after year? If they lose money, where will the money come from? Eventually, they would not be able to pay their operating expenses and their employees. They would not be able to stay in business. Would she apply that same criterion to grocery stores as she would to banks?
I am sympathetic to what she is saying. However, I think there are entirely different ways of providing basic banking services than just forcing branches to remain open when they are experiencing a loss or perhaps are way under target in terms of what the profit in a branch should be.