Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure to talk about this NDP motion, which aims to protect consumers across Canada from the big Canadian banks.
It is clear that we need action and change. What we are hearing is that the Conservatives are against any kind of action that might help ordinary people. That is because it is an elitist party that could not care less about real people. However, this situation is critical and we must take action. That is why the NDP moved today's motion. The purpose of this motion is to protect consumers from sudden credit card interest rate increases. This is extremely important because people are getting hit with these increases right now.
We want to prohibit the unfair application of credit card payments. I will get into that later. Right now, credit card companies can charge interest on the entire credit card balance even if the cardholder has paid off nearly the entire balance in the same month. In other words, a cardholder has a $6,000 balance and pays off $5,900 of that balance. However, some credit card companies can force these ordinary people, who have been grappling with a 20-year-long economic crisis, particularly in the past year, to pay interest on the balance, even if the balance was nearly paid off. This NDP motion would prevent such practices and protect cardholders who make their payments on time. It would also protect young people. Young people are so vulnerable, yet credit card companies target them more and more because they do not have any other way to get credit.
As members are aware, debt among young Canadians has reached record levels. The average student racks up close to $25,000 in debt in CEGEP, college, university or even a professional training program. Credit card companies target debt-ridden students and charge them very high interest rates, because they can make a profit and they know these people have no alternative.
That is the reality at present. People are losing their jobs and cannot pay their full credit card balance. Young people are entering the job market with very high debt levels and are turning to credit cards to survive. As my colleague from Western Arctic put it so well, that is when the sharks at the credit card companies and Canada's big banks strike. These young people are paying through the nose. Today's NDP motion is designed to put a stop to these practices as soon as possible, because these people cannot wait any longer.
This crisis has been going on for 20 years. Family incomes have dropped in nearly all categories, except for the wealthiest Canadians. Family incomes have gone down across the country for the middle class, the lower middle class and the poorest members of our society. People earn less today than they did 10, 15 or 20 years ago. This is a crisis we could see coming. The only people who have benefited from the elitist economic policies of the Liberals and now the Conservatives—nothing has changed—are the rich, who are now earning the lion's share of family income in Canada.
Those are the crises we could see coming, but there is also another that is very much present and clear at this time. Record numbers of workers are losing their jobs. For some months now, hundreds of thousands of jobs are being lost. In my province of British Columbia, more than 100,000 jobs have been lost. Unfortunately, we hold the Canadian unemployment record, thanks to the policies of Gordon Campbell.
People not only have lower family incomes than they did 10, 15 or 20 years ago, but they are losing their jobs altogether. They end up in a terrible situation. What happens then? We have seen it, and my NDP colleagues have been talking about it all day. The credit card companies raise their interest rates for people who are unable to pay off their balance. So they end up with a debt. It is not their fault that, having lost their jobs, they are trying to survive, feed their children, keep a roof over their heads. They have lost everything and they fall a bit behind in their payments to credit companies, and then these companies hike up the interest rate to punish them. We have given one example: last fall, Visa raised its interest rate from 19% to nearly 25%, and that is calculated with charges as well. Normally, imposing such rates on people who have lost their jobs and cannot pay their balance in full ought not to be allowed; 25% interest plus all the other related charges. That is shocking.
So then what? We see it happening. The major Canadian banks are making profits as never before. The Bank of Montreal reports $560 million for the third quarter of 2008. The economy is in crisis and the banks and credit card companies are making record profits at the expense of ordinary people. This is unacceptable. The Liberal Party and the Conservative Party are engaged in economic elitism.
What does all this mean? It simply means that Canadians are getting tired of the economic elitism that has been practised in this country for the last 20 years.
The member for Burlington said it well. He said that the Conservatives are on the side of the CEOs of banks and corporations and that somehow, magically, there will be some kind of trickle down effect.
The fact that we are looking at record profits, the fact that we are looking at gouging on a monumental level, does not concern the Conservatives. It did not concern the Liberals beforehand. That essentially is what distinguishes us from them. That is why we have a key role in the House. The moment an election is over the Conservatives turn their backs on ordinary people. We saw that under the Liberal regime as well. The Liberals turned their backs on ordinary Canadians.
What we have seen over the last 20 years is a complete and utter collapse of family incomes in almost all income categories. Real income has fallen for 80% of Canadians. The top 20% have been well served by Liberal and Conservative economic policies. There is no doubt about that. They now take most of the income in Canada. Not a single Liberal or a single Conservative has stood up in the House and said that is fundamentally wrong.
We see that on trade policy as well. We sign bad trade deals without any support for value-added exports, and Liberals and Conservatives vote for them.
The economic elites, the Liberals and the Conservatives, have told the credit card companies that they can gouge away. The NDP is standing up in the House today to say no more gouging. We are going to come to the defence of Canadians. We are going to protect ordinary Canadians. That is why we moved the motion.