Good work Jack!

Before I get to writing today, I need to give you a little context for the story:

For my UK/non-Canadian readers:
In Canada, we also have what are known as "The Big Five" banks...these are roughly equivalent to places like Barclay's, Lloyds, Natwest, etc. However, in Canada whenever you withdraw money from a cashpoint that doesn't belong to your bank, that bank charges you a service fee. Now I'm not talking about the little privately owned ones (although we have those too) but even the big ones from another bank - it's like getting charged if you had an account at Barclay's but took your money out from a Natwest-owned machine. The fee here is usually $1.50 or something close to that.

For my Canadian readers:
In the UK, as long as you withdraw your money from an ATM from one of the big banks, you don't get charged a service fee. They do have the little privately owned ones as well which DO charge a fee, but they're usually only found inside pubs and convenience stores.

So today I read a story on CBC about how the leader of the NDP (which is the Canadian equivalent of the Lib-Dems in the UK) is proposing that Canadian banks should stop charging fees when customers from other banks withdraw money from their ATMs.

Now, the banks make a couple of good points. In the article, they claim that would be like owners of a gym allowing members from another gym to use their equipment, and that banks in the UK make up the fees by charging more for other services, which may very well be true. But you know what? Combined, the big five made a PROFIT of over $18 BILLION in 2006 ALONE. I realize that they are trying to make a profit for their shareholders, but y'know what? Not all of us are shareholders, but we are all STAKEholders. I would also like to point out that the CEO of the bank I use, Royal Bank, was given a "bonus" of $1.8 million dollars in 2004. Yeah, I'm sure $1.50 to use another bank machine doesn't really bother him to much. Basically I wouldn't give two shits if each bank lost a billion dollars in profit so that the rest of us could have the convenience of taking money out for free. Wouldn't bother me a bit.

I'm glad that Jack and the NDP are still on the backs of big business, cuz frankly, they're ripping most of us off, and giving our money to a very select few.