Mr. Speaker, in March, I asked the Minister of Finance a question. I said at the time that the interest and fees that the major credit companies charged consumers, big businesses and small and medium-sized businesses had a devastating impact on consumers.
I posed a question to the Minister of Finance some time ago with respect to concerns that Canadians were increasingly bringing to bear on Parliament and parliamentarians, and certainly on our party, about rising credit card fees and rates, not just for consumers but also for merchants and for small businesses.
As the hon. minister knew at the time, he had undertaken to suggest that if we passed Bill C-10 there would be action. I took the minister at his word. It was 70 days before we received any type of response from the government. The response that we had was a first step. I am not sure if we could consider it a half-hearted step, but what is extremely important to all of us as members of Parliament is to ensure that we have a timely resolution to what is a growing concern for Canadians.
That growing concern can best be expressed by a simple fact that the interchange fee, that is the fee that is charged to the merchant for receiving a credit transaction, has been increasing sometimes to the tune of more than double.
The House will know that my work with small business, with small enterprise, particularly retail gasoline marketers, was really the beginning of the concern that was raised with me last year.
Both Visa and MasterCard constitute nearly 95% of all the transactions in this country, so the semblance of competition is certainly not there.
While there is evidence that parliamentarians are getting this, we have a joint committee of industry and the committee of finance together working on the issue of interchange fees and the complexities that it creates. The fact is that in the other place Liberals have been working very hard. The committee work is almost finished there.
This member of Parliament and my party have been very interested in ensuring that the government acts purposely and deliberately.
I know my good colleague and friend, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance, will have obviously some comments in terms of defending, but I think we both have to recognize that more can and should be done.
We hope that it will note take more than nine or ten months to finally get the second tranche of action, particularly as it relates to areas where consumers are most affected, things such as dual cycle billing and opportunities for consumers so they can opt out when they find that their interest rates have been increased often without notice.
While it is important to increase the font size of the regulation that would provide larger and better information to consumers and the idea that, for instance, there is more competition, it is very difficult to compare apples with oranges.
I ask the hon. parliamentary secretary, when can he deliver to the House concrete action? Can we expect the next steps to take place as soon as possible and does the minister and his parliamentary secretary consider the issue of credit cards, its bearing on consumers and on merchants, unfinished business?