Mr. Speaker, Bill C-69 is an omnibus budget implementation bill that creates or amends 67 different acts. It enacts the consumer-driven banking act, which makes the federal government exclusively responsible for regulating this sector, with the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada serving as the regulator.
Today we are calling on the government to take this division out and fix its flaws over the summer. We want the government to come back in the fall with a framework that does not give Bay Street an undue advantage over other financial institutions, that respects Quebec's and the provinces' jurisdiction and that delegates the administration of the framework to an appropriate agency.
Since financial technology or fintech companies are not federally regulated, Ottawa has opted to regulate them indirectly by controlling the manner in which the banks can transact with them. Specifically, Bill C‑69 provides that banks and other federally regulated financial institutions will be covered by the new act. They will be required to co-operate with fintech companies, but they may do so only in accordance with federal rules and standards.
As for institutions that are not federally regulated, they are ignored. They can opt in voluntarily if they get the approval of their province, which would then have to waive the right to apply its own laws to the portion of their activities that comes under the open banking system. For now, Bill C‑69 does not affect insurers, due to the sensitive nature of the medical data they hold, or to intermediaries like brokers, but the framework is likely to expand to cover them in the future.
The specific rules and standards that will apply to the sector, particularly in terms of consumer protection and financial liability, will be set out in another bill that is due out in the fall, but the decision to make it exclusively federal is being made now, in Bill C‑69. We urge the government to take out this division, improve it over the summer and present us with a better law this fall. Taking out this division will not delay the bill's coming into force.
In practical terms, under this section of Bill C-69, the Quebec Consumer Protection Act and the Quebec Act Respecting the Protection of Personal Information could cease to apply to financial institutions for any activities related to open financial services. The impact of an exclusively federal open banking system on the prudential obligations of Quebec financial institutions, as set out by the Autorité des marchés financiers, is unclear at this point.
In addition to forcing Quebec to transfer legislative power to Ottawa, Bill C-69 puts Quebec's institutions at a disadvantage with respect to federal institutions. While banks will have only one set of regulations to follow, an institution like Desjardins would be caught between two governments: the Government of Quebec, for its general operations, and the federal government, for its technological interactions with customers.
Being subject to two uncoordinated regulatory bodies could be downright dysfunctional and give banks an egregious advantage over co-ops and trust companies. Bill C-69 gives Bay Street an advantage over other institutions like co-ops and credit unions. As a result—