Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Timmins—James Bay and I thank his ancestors who were founders and leaders in the credit union movement, doing us all a service.
We need to keep in mind that our charter banks were given the exclusive monopoly on certain very lucrative financial transactions, such as credit card transactions, in exchange for providing basic services to all Canadians wherever they are in the country and even sometimes when it is not the most profitable thing to do.
Nobody needs to have a tag day for the banks. They are making record profits every quarter and yet they are abandoning rural Canada and the inner cities, such as this flight of capital, this vote of non-confidence. Fifteen bank branches from the five charter banks have closed in my riding in the last five years and, in the riding of my colleague from Winnipeg North, which borders my riding of Winnipeg Centre, another dozen. That is 27 bank branches.
Who is backfilling that need for financial services? It is the payday lenders, the Money Marts, the Paymax, the scourge on society. I have seen the face of evil and it is the payday loan industry in Canada and in my riding.
The only people who can actually backfill and meet the needs of Canadians is the credit union movement. However, a person needs a fair amount of economic stability to even form a credit union or join a credit union. People should know their banking rights and they should know that the charter banks have abandoned Canadians.
The reason we got onto credit unions, and to get back to relevancy, is that the Credit Union Central of Canada made a very passionate submission to the committee citing its reservations about Bill C-25. It stated that it may be handicapped and hog-tied with this added financial burden of meeting the terms and conditions of Bill C-25 in terms of money laundering and tracking every transaction to monitor for illegal activity.
We all want to do what we can to defeat money laundering and illegal transactions by illegal terrorist groups but let us not put the added burden on the credit unions that may hog-tie their ability to serve the needs of Canadians.