Mr. Speaker, the member went on at great length about the relevancy of this institution and so forth, but at times when I was listening to his speech I could not quite understand that he was talking about bank mergers and the reform of Parliament. I guess that is why people in this country get concerned about their legislators. They are not sure what we are talking about as we do not stay on the topic very long.
There is one thing I would like to ask the member on the whole issue of bank mergers. There was a recent statement by the chief executive officer, I believe it is of the Royal Bank, Mr. Gordon Nixon. He was talking about the fact that the Royal Bank, our largest financial institution by a long shot, feels that there has been a weakening in its competitive position in the sense that it is unable to finance corporate mergers because often these corporate mergers unfortunately come from the United States. For instance, I think MacMillan Bloedel is a company that was bought over by Weyerhaeuser.
When those kinds of mergers occur, companies often look to the financial institutions to provide institutional financing to make the merger work. Because of the sheer size of the Royal Bank relative to some of its American competitors, such as Citicorp and others, it is unable to compete in these mergers and acquisitions.
I know possibly the position of the member's party is it does not like mergers of any kind, but I would like to know what the stand of the member's party is on the fact that our Canadian banks are continuously becoming uncompetitive internationally. Their arms are tied behind their backs in their ability to finance these new acquisitions that are coming up.