Oh, my colleague from the Liberals asks if that is not terrible, in a mocking way.
No one is saying that it is terrible to make a profit. We are talking about whether or not those profits are then used to serve Canadians. Surely the Liberals have some interest, finally, in serving Canadians. Did they not get a lesson at the polls? Did they not realize from the spanking they got that in fact it was time to start listening to Canadians and stop ignoring the everyday needs of Canadians right across this country?
I do not expect much from them. I have tried in the House on numerous occasions to get the former parliamentary secretary for finance to listen to these concerns so that he might get through to the former minister of finance, but it was impossible. We tried on numerous occasions to get the former government to actually address the concerns of enormous profits in the face of absolute negligence at the community level, but to no avail.
We are starting fresh. We are hoping that the Conservatives understand this issue. I am not going to give up just because the Conservatives and the Liberals so often seem like two peas in a pod. I am not going to give up, because there is too much at stake. What is at stake, in fact, are the health and well-being of communities that desperately need access to financial services.
My colleagues on the Liberal benches seem take some glee in the profits that banks make. The Royal Bank's total profits for this year are over $4 billion, as I understand it. The question we are asking is whether there is any way we can keep some of those profits in this country.
Why does so much of those bank profits go off to tax havens in the Barbados where banks do not have to pay any taxes on them? We have just dealt with that debate. Why are some of those profits not put back into the communities that were loyal to the banks over the years, instead of the banks up and abandoning communities?
I do not know if the members in the House who are smiling and laughing during this debate have any understanding of what it is like when an entire community loses every one of its banks, of what it is like to see 10 bank branches close in the space of a decade. I am not talking about just one riding, I am sure, but I can sure talk from personal experience, from the point of view of people in Winnipeg North, a community of older, inner city neighbourhoods.
I am talking about a huge area, if anybody knows Winnipeg, from the tracks to Inkster Boulevard in the north end and from Red River to McPhillips Street. If people know Winnipeg at all, they will understand that I am talking about a large, populated area, which has many small businesses, many families that are not wealthy, and many seniors who are not wealthy, who do not have cars to drive to the suburbs, who may find it difficult to access buses, and who do not have computers in their tiny apartments. Some of the people in my constituency do not even have phones, so access to a bank branch is a rather important necessity. It is a bread and butter issue that is part of one's day to day living and working experience.
We have seen communities like Winnipeg's north end deserted by banks. I want to see that addressed in this bill. I want the government to care about that situation. I would like to see some attention given to this matter.
This is the opportunity.
Back in 2000, when we agreed on the bill that set in motion the five year review with the opportunity to make changes as necessary, we put in place in that legislation, and we agreed with it, the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada, its purpose that of overseeing financial operations from the point of view of consumers, protecting consumer interests and speaking up when necessary. It was a place for consumers to take their concerns and have them addressed and it had some powers to oversee bank decisions in terms of branch establishments and closures.
We discovered through this whole process of bank closures that in fact the bill we supported back then did not have enough teeth in it to ensure that the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada could actually hold a stick over big banks to make sure they were following some due democratic process in terms of communities they were serving. Those communities were loyal to them for decades, sometimes for over 100 years, before the banks up and abandoned entire communities. When the last bank branch turned off its lights and closed its doors in this particular area of my riding, Winnipeg's north end, the community had to do something.
I want to say that one big bank left a branch at the edge of that geographic area I described, and that is the Bank of Nova Scotia. We continue to work with that bank to make sure there is a good liaison between the bank and the people so that in fact that relationship stands us in good stead and that no corporate decision from Toronto will lead to the closure of that bank branch as well.
For this huge area, there are no banks. There are no branches. When faced with that alternative, the community did the right thing. The people of community stood up and said, “If the banks are not loyal to us, then we will not be loyal to them, and we will take things into our own hands”. Thank goodness for that kind of determination, perseverance and community spirit, because over the last several years that spirit, that perseverance and that determination have allowed for the establishment of an alternative community financial services centre.
That development occurred just a few weeks ago and officially opened on November 16, and in fact it is one way in which our community has been able to overcome this kind of neglect and abandonment by the big banks. I am here today first of all to give kudos to people in my community who made this happen and to actually acknowledge the fact that it did not happen because of some decision from government. It did not happen because of largesse from either government or the business community. It happened because local community members decided to fight back. They fought back until they got something, not everything, but something that will take the place of all those banks.
I want to acknowledge all of those people who fought so long and hard to get this centre, which is something that needs to be said in the context of this review of the Bank Act. It happened because of people like Jerry Buckland from the Winnipeg Inner-City Research Alliance. It happened because of his work and his studies, repeating the information over and over again and producing studies, including “The Rise of Fringe Financial Services in Winnipeg's North End”, “Fringe Banking in Winnipeg's North End”, and “There Are No Banks Here: Financial & Insurance Exclusion in Winnipeg's North End”.
Those studies clearly show that as the banks left, payday lenders moved in, and people were left at the whim of an unregulated sector. Fortunately, I believe and I hope, the government is moving on the legislation to actually close the loophole with respect to payday lenders and fringe financial services, but the point needs to be made that in fact there are still so few alternatives for people who have been left high and dry by our financial institutions.
It is important to recognize the work of a community like my own when it fights back and wins, so I want to acknowledge the work of Jerry Buckland, who helped produce all these studies, along with Nancy Barbour, who has since passed away and to whom we owe an enormous debt of gratitude.
We had hoped that in this legislation today there would be some amendments to put some teeth into the agency that is there overseeing consumers' interests. That does not appear to be in this package.
We had hoped that somehow the government would have realized the importance of emulating an initiative in the United States. We often point to initiatives from across the border, but in this case it is one that we should look at and consider seriously, and that is a community reinvestment act that requires big banks that choose to leave a community to put money made from that community back into that community to help with economic and social development.
That is an innovative proposition that needs to be seriously considered in this country. We need to ensure that there is some way to give back to the community that which has been taken out of it through long time loyalty to banks and the contribution to the kind of enormous profits we are seeing today.
Study after study has talked about consumers' interests in this regard. I want to reference a speech by Murray Cooke, who is with the Centre for Social Justice. He writes:
In terms of finance, we need to ensure that not only business has access to capital, but we need to ensure that all Canadians, including those living in rural and small town communities, including disadvantaged groups no matter where they live, have reasonable access to finance and basic financial services. While this is an issue of social justice, I think you could appreciate that there are also wider economic benefits involved in allowing and encouraging everyone to be economically active rather than economically marginalized.
On that note, it is important to point out, again, the impact of the government's decisions in closing Status of Women offices and shutting down programs that were helping in this regard. I refer specifically to a program entitled “Money & Women” , which was organized by the North End Women's Centre in Winnipeg in the heart of my constituency. It works on a daily basis with women to ensure they have the financial knowledge, information and expertise to handle their own banking, to access banking services and not to become dependent on payday lenders.
This is a valuable service that is no longer available because of the government's heartless cuts. This is a case of government money helping a community to help itself. It was a case of money going through a program and an organization to women directly to help them manage their finances and put themselves on a stronger financial footing.
How in the world can that be described as money for bureaucracy and money for administrative purposes? This is money that goes directly toward the benefit of women, and the government has totally denied women that opportunity. Shame on it for that kind of heartless, disgusting cutback that gets at the very soul of the community and the very heart of an individual's desire to play a meaningful role in society today.
People in my community and everywhere do not want to be a drain on society. They do not want to stay on social assistance if they do not have to. They do not want to be dependent on anyone. They want to be independent and they want to manage their own affairs. Surely the most important thing government can do is provide the resources to help people help themselves, to give them the tools through literacy, through bank projects, through volunteer initiatives that help people to help themselves.
I cannot think of a single reason, from the civil society point of view or any perspective from a civilized society, why the government would take that program away. I cannot understand why the government wants to resort to the law of the jungle and the survival of the fittest. I thought it was against people staying on welfare and being dependent on the state. I thought government was about giving people the tools they needed to help themselves. Yet it is taking away the very things people need in order to participate fully in our economy so they can get a job, pay taxes and contribute to this country. It is beyond any kind of understanding and comprehension.
Let me get back to the Bank Act. Another fundamental issue for people around the Bank Act has to do with disclosure. It has to do with access to information and accountability and transparency. I know the bill touches on this issue of trying to deal with some of the numerous briefs that were presented during the development of the white paper.
Bill C-37 falls far short of what is needed. It by no means addresses the real concerns of Canadians. Let us remember, we are talking about a very complex world that provides to citizens a dizzying array of products, choices and services, yet we are doing nothing to ensure that people get the full information they need.
Some very important suggestions were made on that front. I think about the role of Democracy Watch. I think about the role of the consumer advocacy groups and others that have tried to get the now government, and the one before it, to consider the idea of citizen participation, citizen boards as a vehicle for ensuring the proper flow of information between big financial institutions and consumer groups and individuals so people would be fully aware of what was happening and would have some say when there were those possibilities for decision making.
Bill C-37 fails Canadians on some key issues. We need to stop and reflect on what is missing in the bill, what Canadians heard during the process and how we can make a better bill.