Mike Sullivan

[Financial Literacy Leader Act, March 1st, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, having read the bill, I am curious as to how big the envelope was that the Conservative Party wrote this on. It seems to be very hastily and shabbily put together legislation that does not do justice to the report of the financial literacy task force, which made 30 recommendations, not 1, a report that had a great deal of depth and detail to provide a framework for financial literacy in Canada. We believe that framework for financial literacy is not met by this bill. The bill therefore is woefully lacking in detail, its objective, the mandate of the individual and in any of the other 29 recommendations made by the task force.

Where are the remaining 29 recommendations?

[Financial Literacy Leader Act, March 1st, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I, too, note that the one-half recommendation of the financial literacy report in the bill is the appointment of yet another civil servant to oversee something. We are not exactly sure what, except to collaborate and coordinate activities with unknown stakeholders. Many other recommendations having to do with financial literacy have apparently been completely ignored by the government, such as training people, actually including it in school programs and including it as a skill that is required of the federal government.

What does the member say to all of the things that are missing from the legislation that makes it very difficult for anyone to support it, if this is all we are going to get?

[Financial Literacy Leader Act, March 1st, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, when I first read this bill I had a lot of trouble trying to figure out what the heck it was about. What on earth are the Conservatives trying to accomplish? They have created a bureaucracy with apparently no goal. There is no definition anywhere in the bill, so far as I can tell, and perhaps the member can tell me what the goal of a financial literacy leader is. What is his or her mandate? What are his or her powers? What are his or her abilities? Who are the stakeholders the person should be consulting? What the heck are they doing? Could the member help me with that?

[Business of Supply, February 16th, 2012]

Madam Speaker, my friend from Manicouagan and my friend from Edmonton—Strathcona accompanied me on a visit to a reserve in Ontario where education was its number one priority. Members of the reserve have created a native language immersion school for grade school students and they have built their own polytechnic but the government works hard to make it very difficult for them. They had space donated for the school and the government withdrew the value of that space from the allotment for these children.

The government refused for years to hire a superintendent for their school system. We were told that 8,000 kids are awaiting spaces for post-secondary education and that there are so many on the waiting list that the waiting list is now full. They cannot even put their names on a waiting list for post-secondary education. Would the member please comment?

[National Strategy for Chronic Cerebrospinal Venous Insufficiency (CCSVI) Act, February 15th, 2012]

Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to join this chorus of caring Canadians who believe that Canada is a place where medicine should be the best in the world, and that we should not be holding back.

I want to applaud all of the speakers so far today, as well as my friend from the riding just north of me for introducing this bill and being such a strong and passionate advocate.

All I really want to do is to talk about some of the true life stories that go unsaid.

During the election campaign, I talked to a constituent who probably was not going to vote, but I spent a good hour talking to him. He was desperate to get Botox injections in his legs so he could go back outdoors. His muscles were so frozen that he was like a stiff board lying on a bed, unable to move any part of his body but his index finger and his eyes. He was able to play video games on a computer a friend had set up for him, but that was all he could do: move a mouse very slightly with his finger and watch with his eyes. He could still speak and think, but he was trapped in his body. He wanted desperately to have another set of Botox injections, which the Ontario government was not going to pay for, so he could get in a wheelchair and be pushed outside to breathe fresh air again. That was not going to happen and it was absolutely tragic. I do not know if this treatment would help him, but he did not have that opportunity.

A friend of mine was diagnosed just a few months ago. She went through a series of very odd, unexplained dizzy spells and various strange events that were ultimately diagnosed as multiple sclerosis. She is in her late thirties or early forties and is absolutely terrified by what this prognosis means, by what is coming. When I talk to her, that is one of the things that I realize most about this disease, that everyone who gets it knows what is coming. Everyone who gets it is absolutely terrified by being that frozen figure trapped on a bed, able to move only a finger and an eye. That is what they all know will happen.

This treatment has provided, for the first time in centuries, some kind of measurable hope. The government members sit there and suggest that this should be held back from Canadians, from people who want this little bit of hope. These people are going to get it anyway. As a result, all that we are doing is creating an industry in the United States and other countries around the world that should be here.

I want to talk about my brother who was misdiagnosed about 10 or 12 years ago when he had eye trouble and went for an MRI. The doctors then did not tell him anything because his eye troubles kind of went away.

Two years later he went for another MRI because he was having trouble with his hands. The MRI technician asked him why he was back. He asked what the technician meant by that. The technician asked if the doctor had told him what he had. The MRI technician knew, but the previous doctor had not said anything to him. He had MS and the MRI technician knew he had MS.

I watched my fit, capable, active brother, Chris, deteriorate badly, mostly over the past four years. He has two young children, John and Delphine, and a wife, Sue. I then watched him have hope because he went for the treatment in Albany, New York a year and a half ago. Before the treatment, he was in a wheelchair full time, could no longer walk and was deteriorating. Since he has had the Zamboni treatment, he is now moving around in his home, albeit with a walker sometimes. He still gets tired. It is not getting better than that, but it is so much better than it was. He prays every day and thanks God for someone having discovered this treatment. His family do the same.

He is not what he used to be, but there are legions of stories of people who have had improvement from this treatment. The members opposite sit there and oppose it and suggest that somehow we need a few years of more study. In those few years, thousands of people will die of this disease and thousands more will succumb to further degradation of their limbs and their bodies. If that could be prevented, stopped or arrested we would be doing those people a service. To refuse that treatment to Canadians whose lives might be affected is despicable. I do not have another word for it. It is not what Canada's medical system is supposed to be. It is not what Canada's medical system should provide. We should be doing everything we can to provide what is clearly a safe and effective treatment.

I again thank the sponsor of the bill, who will now get to wrap this up.

[Financial System Review Act, February 14th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, this failure of the government to deal with credit cards and other bank fees touches more than just consumers. I would like my friend to comment on how this would impact small businesses in this country as they deal with banks. I am aware of one small business owner in my riding who was just advised that the banking fees for a small business with a bank, because there is nowhere else to turn as they cannot just go someplace else to get this done, would go up by 68% in one day. How does that impact a small business' ability to stay healthy in this country?

[Financial System Review Act, February 14th, 2012]

Madam Speaker, does the member opposite believe that this legislation goes far enough in preventing the possible calamities that went on in the more recent past with banks, including banks in Canada, investing in speculative and derivative ventures that lost an awful lot of money for Canadian banks? Does he believe it is necessary to include that in this legislation and, if not, why not?

[Financial System Review Act, February 14th, 2012]

Madam Speaker, the Conservatives believe that the invisible hand of the marketplace will deal with things like the $8.3 billion in bonuses to executives in the big banks of Canada. That is an obscene amount of money. Not only that, those banks made $25.5 billion in profit, most of which has been squirrelled away for a rainy day.

I cannot remember the last time a bank opened a branch anywhere in Canada that would employ more people. Banks are not a part of the economic recovery, they are not part of the 600,000 supposed jobs that the Conservatives keep talking about. Those banks are making lots of profit. They are using it to pay their executives obscene bonuses and not to create jobs in Canada.

[Financial System Review Act, February 14th, 2012]

Madam Speaker, I suspect not. The bill is very weak in terms of dealing with banks that contribute to the harbouring of money overseas. There is a suggestion in the bill that the foreign subsidiaries of banks may now have to comply with Canadian regulations, but it is very sketchy. It is very difficult to read into the bill any kind of system like that being pursued very aggressively in the United States to chase the money and tax evaders. Even ordinary citizens in Canada are being chased by the U.S. government. None of that is happening here and one has to wonder why.

[Financial System Review Act, February 14th, 2012]

Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill S-5, an act to amend the law governing financial institutions and to provide for related and consequential matters, and to express my disappointment about the inadequacies of this bill.

The member opposite suggested that somehow we were against this kind of thing. We are not against it: we are in fact disappointed that it does not go far enough. I think we have heard their mantra over and over again throughout this entire Parliament. We are disappointed that the government does not do enough, that it does not protect seniors and immigrants and does not protect the rights of ordinary Canadians.

Again we are faced with a bill that does not seem to go far enough. It is our hope that these inadequacies can be addressed at committee, as has been suggested. So far we have not had a good track record of changing bills at committee. Unfortunately the government does not like to listen to our advice, does not want to hear debate, and intends through the time allocation motion it introduced yesterday and passed today to have only one further day of debate before going to the standing committee, which will then have about five weeks to go through this very complicated bill.

I say “complicated” because the bill amends the Bank Act, the Cooperative Credit Associations Act, the Insurance Companies Act, the Trust and Loan Companies Act, the Bank of Canada Act, the Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation Act, the Canadian Payments Act, the Winding-up and Restructuring Act, the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions Act, the Payment Clearing and Settlement Act, and the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada Act. Why are we rushing?

This is a pretty important thing. I do not think there is a person in Canada whose relationship with banks and financial institutions is not somehow touched by this bill. There are few in my riding who do not have bank accounts, I will admit, but as the member for Winnipeg Centre reminded us, they are being served by other institutions that are gouging them, the payday loan companies that have sprung up like mushrooms to replace the banks that have left.

It is very unfortunate that we are not going to get enough time to debate this bill, because it is going to deprive Canadians of a really comprehensive and transparent review of our financial system, unlike the cursory and rushed treatment this bill unfortunately received in that other house, the Senate. We are talking about regulating this country's financial service industry, which employs thousands of Canadians and handles trillions of dollars in assets, and the Senate review of this legislation took three weeks from start to finish. The bill was introduced in the Senate on November 23 of last year and adopted at final reading on December 16.

Several questions arise from that. Why did it take so long to get here? We are in the middle of February and are now dealing with this in a rush because we have to meet a time allocation motion. It is almost three months since it was introduced and two months since it was passed in the Senate. Is the banking system therefore less important to Canadians than guns? Is the banking system less important than copyright legislation? Is the banking system less important than the Wheat Board? These are all things that went before it, and the banking system is thus apparently not seen as important, not as important to ordinary Canadians. We disagree.

Why the Senate? Is the government trying to make work over there in the other chamber? Is that really what is going on? To justify its position that the Senate is an effective place of sober second thought, does it have to find ways to introduce actual government bills in the Senate to give that chamber work to do?

If this is so urgent, why did the government wait so long even to introduce it in the Senate? The deadline has been known for years. The deadline was always going to be the middle of April of this year. Why has it taken so long? It baffles us.

We certainly have time to do this correctly, or we should have had the time to do this correctly. However, the government's mismanagement of this file, given that the five-year review was well known, has contributed to this rushed process whereby the government invokes closure for the umpteenth time and limits our job as parliamentarians to do a proper review of this important sector.

It is as if the government were governing on the back of a napkin. Every time we turn around, there is something that it has forgotten, something it has forgotten to do. This is another one. It forgot about this: “Oh, we better do it in a hurry. We have to get it through.”

We owe it to Canadians to address some of the real problems with the financial institutions, such as by protecting consumers from excessive user fees, not only ATM fees but also remittance fees on transfers that many new Canadians in the diaspora send to families they are supporting back home. Those remittance fees are huge and they are charged by banks and other financial corporations alike, and sometimes they amount to as much as 30%, 40% and even 50% of the money they send overseas.

Why do they have to send money overseas? It is because their families cannot be reunified here in Canada. We now have wait times of as long as 106 months between the time an application is made and a parent or a grandparent is permitted to come back to Canada, and it is as long as 33 months for spouses and children. All the while, the people here who have recently immigrated to Canada and are trying to reunite with their families are trying to support their family overseas by working in Canada and sending what little money they can. When the banks, the financial institutions, the payday lenders, whomever, take 30%, 40% or 50% of that money, it is a crime, and it is not something that the government has addressed.

We need to review the treatment of financial derivatives. Nothing in the legislation talks about that. It was speculation, as we saw in the United States, in particular, that provoked the financial crisis from which we are still recovering. These practices do not contribute to the economy but to the financial volatility that threatens to destabilize economies, and yet there is nothing in the bill to deal with that. The housing bubble in the U.S. created by those derivatives has caused ordinary citizens to lose billions of dollars in the value of their properties, in large measure as a result of banks and other institutions trading and speculating. Canadian banks were not immune from this: Canadian banks lost money on these derivatives.

We need to review mortgage lending practices, particularly in light of the comments made by Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney, who said that record consumer debts are the greatest domestic threat to the country's financial institutions. Right now, consumer debt is 151% of disposable income, partly as a result of aggressive home equity loan marketing that has placed Canadians in vulnerable situations should interest rates rise. If interest rates rise, we are in for a huge collapse in our credit system in Canada. We do not want to see the disastrous practices witnessed in the United States' housing portfolio come here to Canada.

This is an inadequate measure, a missed opportunity to do better for Canadians. The consultation process has been pathetic, to say the least. Apparently, there were some consultations conducted by the government online. Some 30 people found out about it and submitted recommendations. The government cannot release the results of most of those to anyone because it forgot to get the required disclosures from those people for their information to be released. Therefore, we will never know what the feedback to the government was.

On our side, we will support the bill at second reading because we hope that the deficiencies in the bill can be corrected at committee. Some government members have actually said they want to listen and make amendments to the bill, where necessary, at committee. Thus far I cannot remember any bills coming to this House from committee with amendments. Maybe this will be the first. Who knows. I hope my colleagues on the government side will participate in the committee review of the bill in good faith to improve how our financial sector serves Canadians. This will be a challenge, given the time constraints imposed by the government today.

We owe Canadians this effort. I owe this to Canadians in my riding, as does every single member of Parliament here who represents all Canadians, all of whom will be touched by the measures that the government has put forward today in the bill.