Mr. Speaker, I have been looking forward to asking Conservative government members questions, but we cannot find one who will speak and support this 880-page omnibus bill, the budget implementation bill. I would like to ask if one of the government members would speak about the $15.9 billion profit that the top five banks in Canada made last year and the corporate salaries that those banks are paying their presidents.
The Bank of Nova Scotia president was paid $9.7 million. The Bank of Montreal president was paid $7.4 million. The Toronto Dominion Bank president got $10.4 million. The CIBC president got $6.2 million. This was at a time when we were supposedly in a recession. Bank profits are at record levels. The government's answer is to reduce the corporate tax rate even more.
Bank president salaries are at record highs in a recession. What is the government's answer? Its answer is to do nothing. In fact, the G7 and G20 have come out with guidelines on corporate salaries. Has the government implemented those? Not at all. I was speaking to a member of the financial community the other day and he said he thought it very unlikely that the government would ever support those guidelines, because the banks will not let it.