Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate my friend from Courtenay—Alberni on his great speech. We are both Vancouver Islanders. I really appreciate the passion he brings to this place on behalf of his constituents in the beautiful riding he represents.
I was really interested in the part of his speech that dealt with credit card merchant fees, because it appears to me that this is a solution to a long-standing problem for small business that would cost nothing to the government. Visa and MasterCard make huge profits. We can look at the margins that small businesses operate under, at how close they are cutting it to breaking even.
From my colleague's experience of owning a small business, from being on a local chamber of commerce, can he expand a bit on how a rate decrease would actually benefit small businesses in their ability to reinvest in their operations and maybe even hire new employees or give their employees pay raises?