Mr. Orlikow:

Mr. Speaker, I can ignore the Hon. Member for Levis because 99 per cent of the time his contributions are so pointless and so useless that I really should not spend even 30 seconds dealing with them.

The figures I am putting on the record are figures supplied by the banks to the appropriate Department of the Government, whether it be the Superintendent of Insurance, Revenue Canada, or the parliamentary committee which looked into these questions. The majority of the committee's members, of course, were Conservative Members of Parliament.

The Toronto-Dominion Bank collected, in service charges, $138 million. The Canadian Imperial Bank collected $235 million; the Bank of Nova Scotia, $113 million; the Bank of Montreal, $283 million; and the Royal Bank, $365 million, for

a total in 1987 of $1,134 million collected through service charges.

That may be satisfactory to the Hon. Member from Levis and the Hon. Member for Peace River (Mr. Cooper) who interjects almost every day when an NDP Member asks a question. He suggests that those questions come from Bob White of the Canadian Auto Workers or Shirley Carr, the President of the Canadian Labour Congress. The Hon. Member from Peace River should be much more concerned about how the banks overcharge and deal unfairly with their customers than about Shirley Carr or Bob White. The Hon. Member for Peace River, who is not here, will know what I am talking about.

Here we have a group of companies, the Big Five banks, which are among the most profitable, which pay virtually no taxes, and which have consistently ripped off their customers, whether they be individual consumers or small businessmen.

The public has demanded action and the public is not getting action because the Government is bringing in a Bill which it will be able to claim deals with the problem when in fact it is a hoax. In fact the banks will be able to continue to do almost everything they did in the past. It is for that reason, Mr. Speaker, that we intend to vote against this Bill.

Mr. Orlikow:

Where is the Minister?

Mr. Orlikow:

The Hon. Member for Levis (Mr. Fontaine) is interjecting as he so frequently does. I invite him to get up and make his own speech. I say to the Hon. Member from Levis that the figures I am giving are not figures which we pulled out of the air. They are figures provided ...

Mr. Orlikow:

He is a shark.

Mr. David Orlikow (Winnipeg North):

Mr. Speaker, for more than 10 years the organizations representing big and small business, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Canadian Manufacturers' Association, Business Council on National Issues, the Canadian Federation of

Independent Business, and some very prominent businessmen like Mr. Robert Campeau have been warning Governments that the deficits that federal and provincial Governments have permitted and continued are unacceptable, and will lead to disaster for our country.

The Conservative Government supposedly made the reduction of the deficit a major part of its policy. In the last couple of months the Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney) and his Ministers have made promises. We have totalled the cost of those promises to be somewhere between $15 billion and $20 billion.

What astounds me is the cynicism of these business organizations that, after all the years of preaching restraint, are completely silent about the problems that will be created by implementing these promises that will cost billions of dollars to Canadians. They should put up or shut up.

The Government has talked about reducing the deficit. Why does it not say what these promises will mean to Canadians in the next five to ten years?