Mr. Speaker, this morning the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance pretended that he and the Alberta finance minister were very close on this issue. I decided to check into what the Alberta minister of finance had to say about this whole idea. Here is one of the things he said:
Internationally, Canada's passport system is recognized as among the best in the world, with the OECD and the World Bank Group rating it ahead of both the United States and the United Kingdom. And two years in a row the Milken Institute ranked Canada first as having the “best access to capital”.
That is a far different story than what we heard from the parliamentary secretary just a couple of hours ago. The minister went on to say:
The federal government has yet to identify any needed improvement that could not be accommodated within the existing system.
And further he said:
--a single national regulator in the U.S....certainly didn't stop Bernie Madoff...not to mention Enron or WorldCom
Most important, he pointed out that there are a number of financial services that have been regulated by the provinces for 100 years and these will be at risk, and jobs will be moved out of Alberta and to Toronto as a result of this measure.
I would like the member to make some comments.