Madam Speaker, I too have many small businesses in the riding of Sudbury, and they have been coming to me with their concerns about both Visa and MasterCard entering the debit market.
We had a voluntary code of conduct that was presented in November, and of course prorogation stopped the process in which we were supposed to have a discussion when that voluntary code of conduct assessment ended. When the toothpaste is out of the tube, we cannot stuff it back in.
Many small business owners are concerned about priority routing. Many of them are concerned about how this will impact consumers' choice. That is, if consumers come into their place of business, whether they will be able to even use their cards and whether the businesses will be able to take their cards.
Consumers are very concerned about the interest rates that we have seen on the credit side as well. When they go in there, they want to use their card, but now they are starting to hesitate because of the interest rates.
On that side, we also see small businesses having interchange fees increasing. In some cases they have a negotiated rate of 1.6%, but when we start getting all of these new cards in place, the premium cards that the companies are putting out, those negotiated rates go out the door and they end up paying about 2.6%, sometimes even 3%, on the interchange fees.
More needs to be done. We need to have an honest discussion and debate about this, because more needs to be done to help consumers—