Madam Speaker, what we have here, besides interruptions, is the issue that the Liberals do not want to talk about. That is why they are not doing anything about the oligopolistic economy, which includes the fees that Canadians pay for their banking services and, in particular, the fees around a company called Interac. It is on the back of our cards. Interac is an association, but it is basically owned by the four big banks: RBC, CIBC, Scotiabank and TD. Then there is a fifth one, Desjardins. They own it, and they charge a fee any time we move money around. They do about 19 million transactions a day in Canada, but one issue is moving our own money to somebody else through an e-transfer. I am sure members will be shocked to learn that the two companies that chair the board of Interac, which are RBC and TD, get a preferential rate over all other financial services companies. They only charge themselves six cents; they charge smaller and smaller financial institutions, particularly those that are not part of the Interac board, almost 44¢ to 46¢ per transaction. That is huge.
I understand that there is a $1.50 charge on each end on that. Technically, that is a three-dollar charge. If someone does not keep a minimum balance in their account, they get a three-dollar charge from the banks. RBC, TD and the big guys are only paying six cents for that transaction, so they are making a 98% gross margin. If there is a small credit union that is not part of the government-protected oligopoly of Interac, which basically has a complete monopoly on the movement of money in Canada, then it is out of luck. It must pay 44¢ to 46¢ to the big banks that own Interac for this service.
That is why we are here. It is because we had witnesses in committee who refused to table any of their fee structures, even though they are a protected government business. We also had witnesses who came before the committee in the credit card study on the issue of what is called the “interchange fee”. The government made a big announcement that it is reducing the fees that small businesses have to pay to credit card companies for every transaction. It is usually a per cent, somewhere between 1% and 2.9% of the transaction, if someone pays with their credit card, that a small business has to pay to the big banks and the Visa card companies.
There are companies that are the plumber of the system that do that, and one of them is called Stripe. Another one is called Moneris; some may have heard of it. Moneris agreed to the voluntary fee cut that the government asked for, but Stripe decided that it was not going to. Its representatives said that it is because they are being charged a new GST fee and cannot afford it. It is actually a GST fee that they were paying all along, but it was delayed for 12 months because of a court action. However, Stripe representatives used that as an excuse, either because they are greedy or because they are just not as efficient as the other providers of that service. We will be the judge of which one it is.
An interesting thing is that a person on the board of Stripe, which is one of the biggest companies in the world at doing this, is Mark Carney, the special adviser to the Prime Minister on the economy. He is the boss above the Minister of Finance, and he is the next Liberal leader. This is the same fellow who is on the board of a company called Brookfield; the entire company has just decided to move from Toronto to New York to avoid paying Canadian taxes.
Mr. Carney preaches that Canadians should pay more for everything with a carbon tax; carbon tax Carney loves the carbon tax and thinks it should be 61¢ a litre. At the same time, he moves all his business interests to the U.S. and avoids the things that the Department of Finance is trying to do. This is the character of an individual who supposedly aspires to be Prime Minister of Canada. However, he thinks it is better for the companies that he sits on the boards of to dodge Canadian taxes and move to the U.S., where they can pay lower taxes.
I do not know why carbon tax Carney wants to help the newly elected President Trump by moving his head office to New York. Apparently, he admires him more than he admires the current Prime Minister, or he would not be doing this.
As such, why is it that the Liberals continue to filibuster in committee to stop these examinations from happening? The parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Industry has done nothing but filibuster every time we bring up a motion to bring carbon tax Carney, disclose the financials of Mastercard or disclose the financials of Stripe, which carbon tax Carney is on the board of. The parliamentary secretary does not have the guts to vote against it. He just keeps talking and talking, stopping us from getting to a vote. That is the reason we are in this situation in the House, and we have to use the power of the majority to try to get that study done. It is because the parliamentary secretary is too afraid of having this debate in committee.
It makes me wonder what that individual is trying to cover up for the government by preventing these studies from happening. We had one of the banking executives from RBC, who is co-chair of Interac and sits on their board, before committee. One of our members asked him a number of times if he knew the fees of the company he is on the board of, where he represents his bank. His bank owns this company, which is called Interac. He said he does not know the fees.
I have served on private boards and Crown boards. I always knew what the fees were of the businesses I was on the board of. It defied believability that this senior banking executive in Canada would not even know the fees he charges or gets charged on Interac. This is the kind of obfuscation we see happening on this credit card study, and that has prompted this motion. In fact, all the banking heads were before the committee, and we told them we did not want them to betray their confidential commercial stuff, but they all judge themselves publicly on something called “return on equity”. That is how much profit a year the company makes per share that shareholders own. The companies overall, the banks overall, have anywhere from a 10% to 15% return on equity. This means that, for a $10 share, they make $1 to $1.50 in profit a year.
We asked them to share what their credit card business is as a percentage, not the overall revenue numbers or their expenses, as they do on their overall business. What do they make in their credit card business? They said it is all confidential. Of course it is confidential. Some may know that I used to work for a bank at one time, a long time ago. I had hair then. When I worked for the bank on Bay Street, it had a return on equity of 52%.
Some might call that loansharking, but that is the level of return they get. That is why they do not want to do it. That is why the government does not want to do it. We had finance officials in industry committee this morning. We asked them if they knew those numbers on their credit card business. They said they never asked. We had the senior finance officials in committee this morning and asked if they ever looked at the anti-competitive pricing of Interac and what they do between the owners of RBC, TD, Scotiabank and CIBC, and what they give themselves as a cut rate versus all the other financial institutions. They said they have never looked at it.
I asked if the Minister of Finance cares about competitive behaviour in the industry she regulates. They said they do not look at it. That it is somebody else's job; it is the Competition Bureau's job. It is not their job to look at policy and decide whether the industry they regulate is competitive. I asked the same question about these great interchange fees and carbon tax Carney's company, Stripe, which is refusing to abide by the Minister of Finance's order.
I asked if they look at anti-competitive behaviour on the interchange fees. They said it is not their job. They are just the government; there is nothing to see here. They are just the Department of Finance and the Minister of Finance; they are not concerned with competition.
That is the reason we have an oligopolistic economy. We have a Minister of Finance, a Liberal government and a Department of Finance that do not care about the fact that we have an oligopolistic cellphone industry. We have a government that does not care about the fact that we have monopolies in banking, telecommunications and airlines.
The extent to which the government members protect their corporate buddies is incredible.
