Finance committee  If I may, the banks have made that utopia already; it's called Interac or the Exchange. They decided to have a network because customers demanded to have a network where they could take money from machines, from other banks. The value of the network to consumers grows as the network grows.

Finance committee  The parallel can be drawn with telecommunications. We asked large telecommunications providers to allow competitors to connect to their networks. It's the same principle. The network is more valuable as it gets larger. Everyone joins the network and the benefits go to consumers.

Finance committee  Yes, the idea is to ask the banks to justify these fees. At the present time, we have no useful information on that. No one knows how much it costs them to provide service at another financial institution's ATM. If the Tribunal or the Competition Bureau had the necessary powers, we could have that kind of debate.

Finance committee  Thank you. I'm here today to present the position of five of the six members of the Canadian Consumer Initiative on bank fees. We're also here to present the views of the Canadian Consumer Initiative as a whole on electronic payments. I don't believe I'll have time to address our electronic payments submission.