Randall Garrison

[Business of Supply, June 1st, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, what we have in front of us today is pay-to-pay fees. However, as I said a bit earlier, we also have transaction fees, mortgage discharge fees, all kinds of fees. The point of the motion is that there needs to be a mandatory financial code of conduct to protect consumers and we need to end this idea that banks will somehow grow a heart overnight and treat consumers fairly and with care. History shows they will not do that.

[Business of Supply, June 1st, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Winnipeg North raises exactly the point. Consumers, especially in the lower-income groups, have very good uses for that money, much better uses than increasing bank profits.

However, there is one thing we tend to miss when we talk about this transition to a cashless society. I just looked at a study this morning. It showed that this was increasingly true for those in the top third of the income ranks, people who tend to pay everything electronically online. However, for those in the bottom third of income ranks, close to two-thirds of people do not actually pay things electronically. This includes a lot of seniors and other low-income people.

When we talk about a cashless society, we have to be careful that we are not only talking about the privileged sectors of our society, which have the luxury of Internet connections and the ability to do all their banking online.

[Business of Supply, June 1st, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise today to speak on the opposition motion. I will be sharing my time with the member for Newton—North Delta.

I think the motion before the House is very important for most ordinary Canadians. It calls on the government to ban all pay-to-pay practices by banks through the enactment of a mandatory financial code of conduct to protect consumers.

Let us take a minute to think about who we are talking about. We have seven nationally chartered banks but only five really big banks. Just so we understand their financial position, let me quickly review that for hon. members.

The Royal Bank of Canada has assets of $655 billion; Toronto-Dominion has $557 billion; Scotiabank has $496 billion; the Bank of Montreal has $236 billion; and CIBC has $336 billion.

In the first two quarters of this year alone, the banks turned a profit of $15 billion. That is only halfway through the year, so these companies are not struggling to make ends meet.

These are companies with enormous assets, built on the deposits of Canadians. If we run through the big banks, we see that the Royal Bank holds nearly $400 billion of our money, the Toronto-Dominion Bank $391 billion, Scotiabank $350 billion, the Bank of Montreal $236 billion, and CIBC $336 billion, so scrambling to extract every last fee out of Canadians is not something they have to do to stay afloat.

They are remarkably stable banks, and I give them credit for the good job they have done in achieving that stability through rough economic times.

I also want to acknowledge that these banks have more than 250,000 employees who provide, by and large, excellent service to consumers and also contribute a lot to their local communities in terms of charitable activities and fundraising for those charities.

In particular I want to acknowledge the employees of the Toronto-Dominion Bank. As the LGBTQ spokesperson of the NDP, I know the Toronto-Dominion Bank has been very generous in supporting Pride activities across the country and encouraging the end of homophobia in the workplace, both as it affects their employees and as it affects their customers, so I am not saying that banks never do anything good. They quite often do. However, what I am saying is what we are saying in this motion: there is no need for the banks to extract $180 million a year in pay-to-pay fees.

We are standing in the House now with the government saying it is in favour of the motion. That is very interesting. If the Conservatives had just put this measure in the budget, Canadians would already be saving $180 million. Did they simply forget, or did they just discover they are in favour?

I say “forget” quite seriously, because in their throne speech in 2013, they promised to end pay-to-pay fees in federal jurisdiction, and they actually did so. However, when they did, they ended the fees only for telecommunications companies, not the banks. The banks were exempted. Either there was some lobbying going on or the Conservatives forgot their promise to end pay-to-pay fees in the public sector.

The Liberals are also saying they are in favour, but I have to remind the Liberals that they are the ones who brought in all the voluntary financial codes of conduct for banks. They were not mandatory codes of conduct, but voluntary ones, and we have seen again and again that voluntary codes of conduct for financial institutions do not work.

I want to cast back to another example, one that is very important to some of my constituents, and that is what happens when we have a dispute with a bank. In 1996, to their credit, the Liberals set up what was called the Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investment. That was way back in 1996. If an individual had a dispute with the bank, that person could go to an independent, non-profit organization and get mediation of that dispute and some help in taking on the big banks.

Over time, the banks began to not like the decisions of the non-profit, neutral, and independent mediator, so in 2008 the Royal Bank of Canada pulled out. Why? It was because the Liberal legislation was not mandatory. It was voluntary. When the Royal Bank pulled out and got away with it, the Toronto-Dominion Bank watched very closely, and in 2011 the Toronto-Dominion Bank pulled out.

There was some question then raised again in the House by the NDP about whether they could actually get out of having this independent mediation service. This issue was clarified by the Conservatives in 2012, but they clarified it this way: they said banks are required to have a third party dispute resolution mechanism, but they did not specify it had to be the independent, non-profit Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investment.

What did the Royal Bank do and what did TD do? They hired companies to provide the independent third party mediation services.

If a client of one of the banks has a dispute, how would that person feel about taking the dispute to someone the bank has hired for an answer? I think most Canadians would see it as lacking the basic independence that would create confidence in decisions of that third party.

In summary, the government had a chance to bring the banks back under the Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investment but did not do so, and the Liberals have been remarkably silent on this issue of dispute resolution with the banks.

Is it just pay-to-pay fees? I heard some people asking why the NDP was picking on such a minor thing. That question does not take into account that it is not a minor thing for most people, and when the totals add up to $180 million taken from Canadians for paying to pay, it is actually a large thing for most consumers.

However, it is not the only area in which the NDP has been active in trying to point out that the voluntary codes of conduct on fees simply do not work. In 2012, we did a campaign to point out the enormous amount of money being collected by the banks on transaction fees. These are fees charged for putting people's money into their own accounts or taking money out of their accounts. It is their money in and their money out, but the banks charge fees to do that. The banks say there is a cost to these transactions, so they have to charge people for them.

Our consumer affairs critic worked very hard to discover the actual cost to banks. We know what they charge: they charge between $1.50 and $3 for every transaction for people to put their money into their own account or to take it out, unless they are under a special plan. Then the banks give a few transactions for free, because otherwise there would be a total consumer revolt.

What is the real cost? It is 36¢ per transaction.

However, when the NDP put forward a motion in the House to cap those bank transaction fees at 50¢, still allowing a nice profit to the banks, neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives supported it. They said that under these voluntary codes of conduct, it is up to the banks to decide if their fees are appropriate or not.

Once again, consumers are left with very little recourse, because when we check and compare bank fees, we find that these fees are almost all the same, so if consumers are unhappy with one the big five and go to one of the others, they find the same conditions.

I want to raise another thing that we have not addressed today in this motion. That is the question of mortgage discharge fees. What we have seen increasingly in Canada is that when people pay off their mortgage and are finally free of the bank and own their own house free and clear, the bank charges them for paying off that mortgage.

Initially what we had in Canada what was called a mortgage discharge fee. I checked today, and in the big five banks, mortgage discharge fees range between $200 and $400. I grant that there are some paperwork costs, but the banks have been making a profit off the mortgage for 25 or 30 years. They are not loaning the money for free. They are charging interest, but when it comes time to pay off that mortgage, people have to pay to pay.

What we have seen in the last five years, however, is a proliferation of fees. Now there is not just the mortgage discharge fee; sometimes we are also charged an e-registration fee. In Ontario, that runs to $70. We pay the bank to pay off the mortgage, and then we pay to register land titles stating that we paid off the mortgage, so we are paying to pay and then we are paying to tell people we paid.

Some people are also charged what is called a reinvestment fee. The banks have decided that if people pay off their mortgage and go somewhere else and the bank has to find a new borrower, we should pay the cost of that. A reinvestment fee of $300 is charged by most of the banks to reinvest the money we just paid them back. Essentially, we have to find them a new client. As well, there is a reassignment fee of $260 if we change banks, and of course all of the banks charge very large fees for prepaying a mortgage.

I have a lot more to say about the practices of banks, but in conclusion I want to say that I am not attacking the employees of banks. For the most part, employees are like the rest of ordinary Canadians. The problem they have is that they face the wrath of consumers at the wicket or in the office when it comes to paying these fees, and I do have some sympathy for them.

What we heard today is that all parties are in favour of ending these pay-to-pay fees. I look forward to this bill perhaps passing unanimously in the House, and when it does, I would also like to see some action. I hope we are not in the situation we saw with removing the tampon tax or with other things the Conservatives have voted in favour of, when they simply did not take the action they could have taken to save consumers money right away.

[Public Safety, May 27th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, let us be clear. The same government that is forcing successful law enforcement programs like Project Condor to shut down, and the same government that is taking resources away from financial and organized crime investigations, is refusing to protect Canadians' personal information from unprecedented online surveillance.

Instead, it is pushing Bill C-51, a bill so flawed that our allies in the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe think that it violates the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

When will the minister stop pushing this bad bill and focus on real measures to keep Canadians safe?

[Public Safety, May 26th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, it turns out the Conservatives have also been hiding the facts when it comes to security issues.

The minister has repeatedly insisted that the Security Intelligence Review Committee has a mandate to fully oversee CSIS, but it turns out this is not the case.

Yesterday, the head of the Security Intelligence Review Committee said it cannot follow information once shared with other departments, yet this is exactly the power being dramatically expanded by the Conservatives.

Can the minister explain why he has once again been caught misleading Canadians on Bill C-51?

[Common Sense Firearms Licensing Act, May 25th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I will leave checking the irony to the hon. member.

I want to go back to the previous question from the member for Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette. He did mention his offence at the use of the term gun lobby. I said it clearly in my speech, and I have said it many times; the gun lobby is a narrow group. It is not all gun owners in Canada. It is the hon. member who is trying to change the definition of gun lobby.

The gun lobby is those who work here, who are paid lobbyists, and those who work for the manufacturers as paid lobbyists, those who make their living off lobbying for gun changes.

It is not every gun owner or hunter in the country. Most of those people have no idea what has been proposed by the extremists who have been represented by the gun lobby here in Ottawa.

[Common Sense Firearms Licensing Act, May 25th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette will have to pardon me if I actually laugh at his question. It is absurd.

What we have said, and he quoted our leader saying something that I have just said, is that we think we should be able to track guns. What does that mean? We think there should be a serial number on guns, every gun manufactured in Canada, so that when the police find a weapon they can find sales records. Having sales records of guns and a discrete number, which we have openly called for, through regulation on every gun manufactured in Canada, would be a good start for police being able to solve gun crimes.

We are not bringing back the registry, which registers individual guns to individual owners, but being able to track the sale of guns, which is actually a very good idea which the police very much support in this country.

[Common Sense Firearms Licensing Act, May 25th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, this is a government that likes to talk tough on crime and point to all its legislation of increased mandatory minimums and all the deterrents that are supposed to happen, even though we all know that there is absolutely no evidence that these tougher penalties have an impact on the crime rate. At the same time, it does things that make it much more difficult for municipal police and the RCMP to do their jobs.

One of those is the government has continued to cut the budgets available since 2012. The Conservatives like to point back a decade ago to 2006 and talk about things they did 10 years ago, but in fact for the last three years, until this year, they have been cutting the budgets. This year, they are holding them relatively steady at a level much lower than they were in 2012, which makes it much more difficult for police to do their jobs. It also makes it much more difficult for the RCMP to do things like provide the 100 RCMP members that have been promised, with no timeframe, to address the concerns in Surrey.

[Common Sense Firearms Licensing Act, May 25th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I am a little puzzled by the member's question because he knows good and well. We have said it repeatedly here. When we become the government after the next election we have no intention of bringing back the gun registry. The registry is dead. The data has been destroyed.

What we have said is, having done that, we have to take care to make sure that the licensing and regulations we have in place do everything they can to promote public safety and community safety at the local level. As I stressed in my speech, we do not think that Bill C-42 meets this standard.

[Common Sense Firearms Licensing Act, May 25th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I think it applies most directly to the transportation of weapons. What we are talking about here is that when the police stop someone, under Bill C-42 that person would not have to have an authorization to transport the weapon in the car, but they could automatically talk about five different categories of places they could be transporting that gun to.

We are not talking about the law-abiding sport shooter. We are talking about the ability of the RCMP to enforce the laws against illegal transportation of guns on those who are in fact interested in gun violence and crime.

I talked to my local police chiefs about this. I talked to a local member of the RCMP and they acknowledged that they felt this could potentially make enforcing the regulations against illegal transportation of guns very difficult for them. That would have an impact on gun violence in urban areas.