Mr. Speaker, I may have to go back a long way before I can find a member of Parliament has had the House of Commons put on record that someone is not one of his good friends.
I know Mr. Orchard ran against the member for Prince Albert the last time around and perhaps that is why he is referring to it. That is very strange. He runs the risk of losing Mr. Orchard's vote the next time around if he happens to move into the new riding of Prince Albert.
I mentioned the importance of access to capital. I am surprised to hear a so-called free enterprise party such as the Alliance not being concerned about the big banks and how they sometimes pull back on providing capital to small business. I have seen many cases over the years where banks have withdrawn from the market of providing adequate small business equity financing to small businesses.
One thing that has happened many times is the credit union movement has moved into that void and provided capital for small businesses. That is another concern I have. That is why we should have a full fledged debate in this country about capital.
The other thing I have noticed about small business capital is that there are more and more first nations people who are interested in small and medium sized businesses. I think of my province of Saskatchewan and some of the small business activity by first nations people. They need access to capital as well. I think this really ties into the debate on Bill C-7, where first nations people really want to run their own affairs. They want respect to determine what kinds of institutions they want to govern themselves. They want to ensure that more of their people get training and skills and get professions where they can develop their own communities and people. They want to give their own people jobs that are well paid. They want their people to be entrepreneurs, professionals, teachers and social workers.
One way of doing that is to ensure we have more capital from banks for first nations people, for community development, for their own cooperatives and small businesses. I think for example of the First Nations Bank of Canada that is based in Saskatoon and some of the work it is doing.
An area we have to look at when we talk about bank mergers is the access to capital, if there is a big merger among two or three big banks for small business, for first nations and for farmers across Canada? These are some of the very important things about which we should talk.
I was reminded of this just a minute ago when the member for Churchill talked about access to reasonably priced services by banks. She mentioned that these services should be reasonably priced. She was talking about going to an ABM machine and hearing people complaining about the high prices. We see this now in bank service charges.
I do not have my files with me today. If the House wished to extend the time I am allowed to speak, I could go on for a couple of hours and tell members about the horror stories I have heard about ordinary citizens who have been charged time and time again by banks for service charges. These are ordinary citizens who cannot afford this kind of hidden taxation.
There should be a certain number of transactions that any citizen can have, be it 20 or 30 or how many per month, without charge. Then low income people and people with modest incomes would not be penalized when they have to use a bank a couple of times a week.