Finance committee  For discarded cigarette butts that were collected on various locations around the province—

Finance committee  —the percentage of those cigarette butts that were identified as contraband was 22%.

Finance committee  Sure. The 1.5% goes to the credit card network or credit card system, so the credit card providers, the banks, and the intermediary parties that provide the POS equipment, point of sale equipment. Among all of them, that 1.5% is divided up in accordance with their agreements.

Finance committee  I'd be very surprised if they're charging you a surcharge, because their contracts with the credit card companies do not allow them in Canada to charge that.

Finance committee  I would say though that the taxis in Ottawa do have the ability to surcharge.

Finance committee  If you use your credit card, it's an additional $1.50. That was a decision of the municipal government here in Ottawa.

Finance committee  Exactly.

Finance committee  Yes, and that's been introduced in Australia, for example, but not very effectively. What happened there, and it's one of the downfalls of that proposal, was that merchants use that as a means to generate additional revenues and they charge more than the cost of the credit card f

Finance committee  It would certainly have an impact, because the convenience store across the street is going to be accepting those, so it will take business away. We do know to what extent credit cards are used in various categories. In the gasoline category, for example, up until about six mont

Finance committee  Yes, from a convenience store perspective, it would impact sales of tobacco products certainly, but also secondary products within the store, because tobacco customers will typically buy other products. The amount that our industry has looked at was about $2.5 billion. The last

Finance committee  Sure. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Alex Scholten, and I'm president of the Canadian Convenience Stores Association. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak with you tonight on behalf of the convenience store industry in Canada. Our trade association

Health committee  I wouldn't say “many”. Given my previous response to Mr. Wilks, the best practice recommendations came from what our boards of directors, who are retailers across the country, wanted to do in their stores. The vast majority of retailers who are represented in our membership will

Health committee  Publicly we state that we don't support those retailer practices.

Health committee  The best practice document came from discussions we had with our U.S. sister organization, the National Association of Convenience Stores. They've also come out with a best practice recommendation in that regard. With regard to the insight we had from them—they were a little bit

Health committee  I do.