Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to rise in the House today to discuss Bill C-8, the financial sector reform act.
The member for Regina—Qu'Appelle, who has been a member of the House since 1968, has been a very active member of the finance committee. A former colleague of the House did yeoman work for the people of Canada and for the House of Commons, Mr. Nelson Riis. Mr. John Solomon did great work in the finance committee by bringing forward financially related matters to the House of Commons for all Canadians. It gives me great pleasure to congratulate them and thank them for their work on behalf of all Canadians and our party.
We could not help but notice that members of the Canadian Alliance were patting themselves on the back, saying what a great job they had done and how the Liberals had incorporated many of their aspects into the legislation. We in the New Democratic Party would also like to congratulate our member from Regina—Qu'Appelle for many of his motions and ideas over the years that are finally incorporated into the bill. Also, I will be splitting my time with the great member for Winnipeg North Centre. I will take the first 10 minutes and she can take the remaining 10.
I will go over some of the positive aspects of the bill. Before doing so, let me indicate that the bill is 900 pages thick. It changes 4,000 statutes of legislation. It is incredibly complex. There is no one in the House or in the country, even with an array of lawyers, who can figure out exactly what it all means in the end.
Anyone who says he or she understands it completely is simply not telling the truth. I certainly do not profess to know all about it nor could I even attempt to, but our member for Regina—Qu'Appelle has studied it thoroughly. He and his staff have gone over it fairly extensively and have come up with their own concerns about and recommendations on the piece of legislation.
One positive aspect of it is that it expands the access to the payment system, which is one of our long held positions. This is a measure that increases competition by allowing insurance companies to offer chequing deposit accounts. Most important, and this is something that I personally really like seeing, it helps credit unions compete by allowing the creation of a single national service entity to support credit union membership. This is a long held New Democratic position.
Also, as members know, there are a lot of people throughout Canada who have complaints about banks. Besides bashing the post office, bashing the banks in one way or another, whether it be for service charges or closure of an institution or facility in a rural town, is one of the great Canadian pastimes. We bash the weather, the post office and banks.
An article appeared in a daily newspaper in Nova Scotia on Saturday about something that Scotiabank has done. It is simply outrageous that Scotiabank, a fine reputable institution like that, would send out to unsuspecting people in the country cheques in the amounts of $500 to $5,000. They sent these out mostly to senior citizens, saying, “here you go, folks, here is a cheque for $500 to $5,000”. A lot of people had no idea what this was all about until they cashed the cheque and spent the money. Then they found out that in essence it was a cash advance on their credit cards. They did not ask for it. No one told them it was coming. It just appeared in their mail one day.
Mr. John MacLeod, the business editor of a daily newspaper, pointed out quite accurately that someone in Scotiabank should have his or her head taken off for this one. It is absolutely scandalous that a bank with this reputation throughout Canada, one of our longest serving institutions, should do that to unsuspecting people. It is simply misleading. It is like the negative billing option with the cable companies. That is exactly what that bank did. As long as banks partake of that kind of practice they will never have the confidence and goodwill of Canadians that they need in order to move forward in the financial sectors.
If we had a Canadian financial services ombudsman and a consumer protection agency, which the bill offers, it would start the consultation process whereby the banks can legally be forced to provide a low cost account. This is a position we have held for a long time. We have to offer those people on low and, in many cases, no incomes the opportunity to use financial services at a low cost that is more beneficial to them.
I must say in jest that for anyone to say this will get people off the social assistance rolls, it simply is not on, as much as we would like to see that happen in a very positive way. I could not quite understand why the secretary said that. That simply is not on.
The bill also formalizes a process of collecting data on small business lending and does not expand the banks' business powers into the areas of auto leasing and insurance networking. This is a long held position of ours, in spite of a recommendation by the MacKay report which said that they should.
Some of the negatives in the bill are very clear. It abandons the wide ownership rule, which means that instead of the 10% ownership rule it would be 20%. That means we could have two people very closely related to one another owning 40% and 60% and so on. That consolidates too many financial services into very few hands.
We believe that down the road the bill and other legislation that will probably come to follow it will eventually lead to full bank mergers and full institutional financial mergers. That would mean that instead of having the broad range of competition within Canada that we see today or that we have seen before, we would see a lot more competition from foreign interests such as Europe, the United States or Asia. That may or may not be a good thing for Canadians, but one thing is clear: a lot of Canadians have no deep understanding, no clear understanding, of what the legislation means to them in their daily lives. Another thing the bill does, which is rather ironic to be talking about, is concentrate far too much power in the hands of the Minister of Finance; we call it the new banking czar.
In the area of parliamentary reform, where we are talking about loosening the powers of the PMO, various ministers and the government side in order to give members of parliament more say, clout and power in representing their constituents, it seems rather ironic that we are talking about a bill that does the complete opposite and gives far too much power to the Minister of Finance. In fact in many ways the devil is in the details. By obscuring the facts, the full impact of the legislation may not be understood by many people. The bill is riddled with regulatory clauses changeable by order in council, which means that the order in council can ignore the wishes of parliament and make changes by decree, thus avoiding the House of Commons and any legitimate debate in the future.
Another failure of the legislation is something the United States has but we have yet to incorporate. I am talking about a community reinvestment act. This would provide the opportunity to force the banks to reinvest a certain percentage of their profits in their local communities. This would be the same as it is in the United States. We believe it would go a long way in assisting the more extremely rural areas.
One thing the legislation does not do is to in any way stop rural bank closures, which is something that a lot of people in rural Canada are greatly affected by. For example, what about the closure of the banks in Sheet Harbour or Musquodoboit Harbour or anywhere in the country where there are small rural communities that need access to financial institutions? The legislation paves the way to make bank closures even quicker, especially of the branches. The argument of course is that foreign companies like ING Bank and others can come into the country and have virtual banking, with no need for the bricks and mortar.
However, a large percentage of Canadians depends on bank branches. They need to see a teller. They need to understand specifically how to fill out the forms for their regular chequing accounts, how to fill out their bank books and everything else. In fact last week one of my constituents passed on and his wife was left with no idea of how to balance a cheque book or do any aspect of banking. Her husband did it all. In how many families in the country does that situation exist today? If the male member of the family passes on and leaves everything to his wife, as in that particular case, can she understand all the intricacies of her financial account and everything else? This happens all the time.
