Finance committee  That is less than 3% of what the large Canadian banks made last year. Mr. Jean referred to—

Finance committee  Mr. Jean referred to the competitiveness of credit unions, which has has clearly been assisted by this tax provision. I mentioned my perplexity earlier on—

Finance committee  There are 348 credit unions, so you have 348 credit union service offerings right across the country. Credit unions attempt to maintain competitiveness with commercial banks, but it's a tough go. When you look at the level of concentration in the Canadian financial services ind

Finance committee  I don't think I can generalize to that effect. No.

Finance committee  It sure does, because—

Finance committee  —if you don't have a dollar to put into capital, then you can't lever that capital into asset growth. That's why I say it's really a tax on growth. It's a matter of arithmetic: if you can't lever that capital, then you don't have that capacity to grow. In that small community,

Finance committee  Yes, it would, and Mr. Manness has referred to this. A lot of credit unions in communities where they're the only physical presence through mergers within the credit union system are branches of larger credit unions, and those larger credit unions would be affected by the tax i

Finance committee  I'll answer first. Thank you for the question, Ms. Nash. We were not consulted on this change. I think that was actually indicated by the officials when they appeared before this committee last week. I know that when the budget is close to being prepared, typically one would not

Finance committee  It's perplexing. We don't come before this committee and ask for a lower rate; we don't ask for a handout. We're quite comfortable with it. Desjardins is comfortable with it, and, as far as we know, so are the banks. It's pro-competitive in its impact, so why mess with it? It j

Finance committee  The provision as it is now is pro-competitive. So when you take the provision away, when you increase the tax rate, what you're really doing is supporting greater concentration in the Canadian financial services industry. It's really a tax on the growth of credit unions.

Finance committee  We're talking about federal tax policy, not Quebec tax policy. I know nothing about Quebec's tax policy. We don't operate in Quebec. We're credit unions that operate in the rest of Canada. Desjardins is not here, but I know that they support our concerns about this change. They c

Finance committee  Mr. Chairman and committee members, I'd like to thank you for this opportunity to appear before the committee regarding Bill C-60 and to explain why the credit union system opposes the tax increase on credit unions contained in the bill. We oppose the tax increase because it dis

Finance committee  I'm not sure I understand the issue. We don't have a particular concern in this bill other than, as I say, I think it misses an opportunity to deal with this issue of the Bank Act security.

Finance committee  This legislation doesn't deal with demutualization. The demutualization issue is somewhat touched upon in the 2010 legislation that was passed. That legislation has not been proclaimed in force, and we expect to see some regulations dealing with this subject. It would only apply

Finance committee  Mr. Chair, I think the government has indicated that it's prepared to move sooner than five years where needed, and we would hope that this could be done sooner than five years, but as I say, we respect that this is a technical bill. But we think this really needs to be looked at