Mr. Speaker, the member for Louis-Hébert is absolutely right.
I did talk primarily about credit unions, but what I said applies to caisses populaires as well. I am not talking about Desjardins Group; I am talking about caisses populaires. I belong to one of them, a small one that will have to pay more taxes. Nobody consulted my caisse. In fact, it found out about this on the news because the government is not interested in consulting people when it knows they will not say what it wants to hear.
My caisse is in a big city, but I know that there are a lot of small towns in northern and eastern Ontario, across Quebec and throughout regions that are far from major centres where the only financial institution is a caisse. I would not be surprised if some of them have to close their doors because of this tax hike. Small Canadian communities are in danger of losing access to local financial services because the government did not talk to anyone about its decision to hypocritically—yes, hypocritically—cover up the fact that it is just trying to boost its revenues.
The government is justifying the fact that it did not have the decency to consult people by saying that it is trying to level the playing field between banks and caisses populaires. That is hogwash. I looked at the numbers. Caisses and credit unions are not even on the same playing field. Unlike banks, they do not have the ability to issue share capital. They have to accumulate capital through retained earnings. If the government taxes those earnings, caisses populaires and credit unions will no longer be able to help communities as they do now, or at least, they will be less able to do so.
Let us hope they can survive this. If they succeed, it will certainly not be because the government did anything to help the co-operative movement. It will be because communities rallied behind their co-operative financial institutions—their caisses populaires and their credit unions.