Elizabeth May: Mr. Speaker, I approach this motion with a sense of disbelief that we are spending an entire day on this issue.
I know that a lot of people are upset with the banks. I am looking at the banks’ profits. The five big banks in Canada in 2013 had a $2 billion increase over their profits of 2012. They are now up to $29.5 billion a year. I would like to talk about some kind of sensible corporate taxes on these kinds of profits. I think we are starting at the wrong end of the debate by talking about ATM fees.
That said, I would like to ask my hon. colleague across the way if he does not agree with the point that with the record profits of the Canadian commercial banks, it is time to look at reasonable taxation rates.
Mike Allen: Mr. Speaker, I talked about the ATMs and their being linked. We cannot separate the issue. It is a service.
With respect to banks profits, raising taxes is not going to happen. We are certainly not looking at a high-tax environment. I can tell the NDP members that in addition to not supporting this motion, I suspect that they should not wait for us to have a carbon tax in the budget. They should not wait for us to raise CPP taxes. They had better not wait for us to raise corporate taxes, because we will not do that.
At the end of the day, we should also look at these corporations, which pay significant dividends to pension funds and others. Those are accruing to seniors and are benefiting our communities.