Finance committee  Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman. I would like to thank you and the Standing Committee on Finance for inviting the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada to appear before you. I am proud to say that I have recently been appointed commissioner of the Financial Consumer Agency of Canad

Finance committee  There are a couple of issues around there that you've identified. As I tried to make clear in my opening remarks, unfortunately what the mandate of the agency is is to apply the disclosure provisions, the provisions that relate to consumers and the consumer protection provisions.

Finance committee  I have nothing to say with respect to that either.

Finance committee  I guess I'd have to say there's only a part of that we can deal with effectively. There are certainly much broader questions. For example, part of the question you've asked related to areas that are significantly outside my mandate in terms of investments. With respect to the m

Finance committee  Exactly.

Finance committee  Actually, it's not correct to say that we've seen an increase in complaints; we've actually seen a decrease in complaints. What we have seen is a significant increase in inquiries. There are many more people who know about us now. We get close to 150,000 hits a month on our websi

Finance committee  We have a variety of complaints. Interestingly enough, I would say the majority of our complaints are in areas that don't really directly relate to our mandate; in other words, to compliance with legislation. The smaller number of complaints, well less than half—I don't have the

Finance committee  You are raising a question which in all honesty I am unable to answer. Generally speaking, I would say that one cannot lose sight of our twofold mandate. We not only ensure compliance with the law, which is very important: our institutions are very large and must comply with legi

Finance committee  Our complaints have actually been going down quite significantly.

Finance committee  That would be in my annual report.

Finance committee  To the extent that they actually do consumer lending, I have. Fundamentally, I don't deal with products; I deal with the disclosure requirements. They normally don't have accounts, so to the extent that they make loans to consumers, either as direct loans—which usually doesn't ha

Finance committee  To the extent that it does retail, yes, it is. They open accounts to retail customers, so yes, for example.

Finance committee  I can't speak to the specifics of the complaint, but—

Finance committee  No, we have not carried out any specific study on that. Obviously, we have figures which have been collected by others on this, and that is one of the reasons why we are increasing our efforts regarding clearer communication, to make sure that our information is clear and availab

Finance committee  No, but it may be because I have not been there for very long. Many of the regulatory bodies at the federal level are indeed funded by the institutions they regulate.