Finance committee  As I said, we have one course right now that we're offering for 15- to 18-year-olds. It's very much targeted at that age group. It's approximately 18 hours. It deals with financial basics. It starts with basic concepts like wants versus needs, budgeting, and so on, covering the g

Finance committee  I can't comment.

Finance committee  As a general matter, I would say that the issue, from a consumer's perspective, is not specific to rating agencies. In fact, rating agencies would be of relatively little interest. There are market conduct rules. Most of those market conduct rules are actually within provincial

Finance committee  I echo Ms. Hughes Anthony's comments. We actually have a partnership right now on “YourMoney” and we provide links to each other's websites. The reality is there is more that we probably can do. We will definitely be exploring next steps. We talk about that on a regular basis.

Finance committee  I don't even have access to the type of information you're referring to. My mandate is to ensure that consumers and financial institutions comply with the rules. Small merchants are caught between the two in a way, and I don't have a mandate concerning their activities with finan

Finance committee  We have already implemented this project elsewhere in the country. In English, it's called The City, and in French, La Zone. We made this program available to all Canadians last September. In fact, it was the Province of British Columbia that launched a pilot project, if you will

Finance committee  Yes, we compare about 200 credit cards available in Canada and as part of these comparisons, we mention the assets, the costs, and the advantages of each card. So the price, etc., and what is offered by each card is comprised in our interactive tool.

Finance committee  I don't actually have access to very useful information in that regard. What I can tell you is the information that we get tends to come directly from consumers' contacts with us. You won't be surprised to hear that the big issue that is raised with us by consumers is the rates,

Finance committee  I saw the same newspaper article, I guess, that you saw, about American Express in particular. Based on our information, as I say, when consumers contact us with issues, we have not at this point in time seen an increase in the levels of complaints regarding a withdrawal of credi

Finance committee  We are not seeing anything different.

Finance committee  I think what I'm finding is I have more of an audience now than I used to have. It was a little harder to get people to listen; now they're listening a little more closely. For me, I suppose that's the silver lining.

Finance committee  I'd be thrilled to do that. We do send out a householder periodically to MPs to give them some basic information about what we do. The reality is that we are a very small organization and therefore limited in the actual amount of time we can do. We are about 45 people.

Finance committee  Thank you for your question. Allow me to respond in two specific ways. We do indeed have an education role to play, and we generally play this role in a way... I wouldn't say that we give specific advice. We try to make consumers understand how the financial system works in gene

Finance committee  Yes. I can't speak about disclosure rules because these are not rules that we are responsible for. So, in general, in this type of case, what we do is try to encourage consumers to be very careful with the contracts they negotiate and to ensure they clearly understand all the asp

Finance committee  Good day, Mr. Chair. Thank you for having invited the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada to appear before the Finance Committee today. I am accompanied by my colleague Lucie M. Tedesco. While the role of my agency is limited with respect to the specific nature of the present