Mr. Speaker, I will get it right. I got my year wrong. Against Foreman, there was a technique used by Ali that was later called rope-a-dope. I do not think he fixed the fight but the rope-a-dope idea is to just sort of lay back and let the opponents swing wildly away, burning themselves out.
While that is an amusing pugilistic tactic, what we are worried about in this particular budget is that if the government continues to swing wildly away with these very expensive schemes, the effect would not only be burning through a great deal of actual capital, and real and perceived political capital, but it would hurt Canadians in the long term.
What we have heard from small businesses and the business community at large is that merchant fees, in particular, are a grave concern, that restaurants and small businesses across the country are getting hit with higher and higher fees when customers use these credit cards, and that there is a voluntary but useless program that has been invoked by the Conservative government.
Would my friend join with me in suggesting that we need to begin to have mandatory rules set out for credit card companies and banks to restrict these abusive practices that hurt small—