Hon. Andrew Cardozo: I would like to build on a question that Senator Black just raised a couple of minutes ago with regard to the challenges faced by rural towns and villages that have had a lot of bank closures. There have been two proposals that I think could really help in this area. One has been what has been referred to as postal banking, namely that bank branches could be situated in post offices across the country, with as much as just a single person. This proposal has been around for a while. The other has been to build a Canadian public digital infrastructure, with Canada Post playing a greater role in developing the digital infrastructure across the country, including things like large language models and, importantly, data centres.

Is this something the government could consider, where it works on all three issues together?

Hon. Pierre Moreau (Government Representative in the Senate): Thank you for the question. But as Senator Black mentioned — and, obviously, he is right — the decision of establishing a branch belongs, at the end, to the bank itself. That is the reason why the government is looking at increasing competition to facilitate credit unions to establish branches in rural areas.

We witnessed the same thing in Quebec. It’s not only in Ontario. We have Desjardins, which replaced many bank branches and was simply replacing the branch with an ATM in rural areas.

I will take your advice into consideration, and I will certainly underline your suggestion to the minister. But I think that the answer remains with increasing competition in rural and remote communities.

Senator Cardozo: Thank you very much, senator. What I am suggesting is basically looking at the mandate of Canada Post and giving it an increased mandate to deal with banking as well as digital infrastructure.

Senator Moreau: I will raise the issue with the procurement minister who is responsible for the Canada Post Corporation.