Mr. Speaker, I know my colleague works very hard, particularly with respect to people.
We are talking about these payday loan places. This is obviously a sector of the economy that has a propensity to prey upon those in our society who do not have the means and the wherewithal to have bank accounts or enough money.
I have a question for her. When her government was in office, we raised a number of times, from this corner of the House, the problems of, particularly in rural communities, the number of bank branches that were shutting down across this country. It was just an absolutely massive number of communities. I think of one in my region, Stewart, B.C., now a booming mining town, which has lost all its bank branches.
The Bank Act is controlled by the federal government. It was meant to be there to regulate banking. It is such an important part of our economy. It is an important part of Canadians' lives.
I am wondering if there are any measures her government ever took to curb the loss of banking establishments in rural Canada. If not, what recommendations could she make in conjunction to the legislation that we are dealing with right now to offer some sort of sense of hope to the communities like Stewart, B.C.? These communities are somehow lost in the shuffle of where banks and these payday loan institutions are making their decisions, which is at the bottom of the deck, and very rarely with any respect to the rural communities that some of us represent.