Sorry, this entry is only available in Français.

(December 2024)

Controlling the market, and gouging out world-leading, record profits year after year for the past decade, while reducing service and treating many customers unfairly

According to Finance Canada, despite the lowering of barriers to competition 20 years ago under a World Trade Organization agreement, Canada’s Big 6 Banks:

• Bank of Montreal (BMO)
• Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC)
• National Bank
• Royal Bank of Canada (RBC)
• Bank of Nova Scotia (Scotiabank)
• Toronto Dominion Bank (TD)

control 93 per cent of all banking assets, and are more profitable than comparable banks in other countries, and than small banks in Canada, and Canada’s corporate sector overall. The big banks control of the market essentially allows them to gouge and abuse customers with excessive fees, high interest rates (especially on credit cards). As a result, government regulation is needed to stop them.

The federal government bailed out the banks with $114 billion in mortgage purchases during the financial industry fraud crisis in 2009. It hasn’t required the banks to do anything in return for that bailout, or for the protections from foreign competition that the government has given the banks since 1967.

Canada’s Big 6 Banks reported, yet again, excessively high annual profits totalling $51.28 billion in 2024, $30 billion higher than their 2010 profits, all reaped through gouging their customers with excessively high credit card and other credit interest rates and mutual fund and other banking fees.

The banks gouged all Canadians who had loans back in 2015 by failing to lower their interest rates as much as the Bank of Canada had lowered its interest rate, and then the banks abused everyone with savings accounts by failing to increase their deposit account interest rates as much as the Bank of Canada when it began raising its interest rate in 2022.

Canada’s Big 6 Banks also paid their CEOs an average of $11 million each in 2023, and the average increased to $12.3 million in 2024 – 55% higher than in 2008).

Canada’s Big 6 Banks handed out $23.75 billion in bonuses to their employees in 2024, 12% more than the $21.2 billion total in bonuses.

The federal government also continues to refuse to make the Big Banks pay their fair share of taxes. Canada’s Big Banks pay a tax rate of only 16% — lower than banks in other G7 countries. The Big Banks also exploit tax loopholes more more than all other Canadian big businesses. England imposed a permanent annual excess profits tax on its banks in 2011, and Australia did the same in 2017.

For more information, see Democracy Watch’s
Bank Accountability Campaign

(August 2025)

Democracy Watch’s letter-writing campaign and petition call for the following key bank accountability changes needed to make Canada’s Big Banks give everyone a break on interest rates and fees, pay their fair share in taxes, and treat everyone fairly, now and after the coronavirus crisis is over:

1. Require banks to cut credit card interest rates in half now (as they are at a gouging level now, and always have been excessively high), and allow people renewing their mortgages to re-renew without a penalty at a lower interest rate if interest rates decrease over the next few years, and require them also to lower all their interest rates at exactly the same time as the Bank of Canada lowers its interest rate over the next few years;
2. Require banks, trust and insurance companies to promote in their mailings and emails to customers that they can join an independent, consumer-run Financial Consumer Organization (FCO – as recommended in 1998 by the MacKay Task Force, and the House Finance and Senate Banking committees) so consumers have a place to call for help if they are gouged or treated unfairly, and to get fully independent, expert advice (See details at: https://democracywatch.ca/question-and-answers-about-the-proposed-financial-consumer-organization/) and also require the banks and largest mutual fund companies to promote in their mailings and emails to customers that they can join an independent, consumer-run Individual Investor Organization (IIO – as recommended by an Ontario legislative committee in 2006) so they have have a place to call for help if they are ripped off or treated unfairly, and to get fully independent, expert advice (See details at: https://democracywatch.ca/question-and-answers-about-individual-investor-organization-iio/);
3. Require banks to disclose the profit level of every part of their business (credit cards, mortgages, lines of credit, each other type of loan, bank machines, and investment and insurance divisions) after fully independent audits (overseen by the Auditor General);
4. Require banks to keep all their interest rates and fees at a level that gives them no more than a reasonable profit (for example, many U.S. states cap credit card interest rates);
5. Require banks to disclose detailed information about how many people and small businesses apply for credit cards and loans or all types, and loan interest rate cuts or other relief, and accounts, and how many are approved and rejected, by type of borrower and customer, and require corrective actions if a bank discriminates against any type of borrower or customer (as the U.S. has required banks to do for 40 years);
6. Require the banks to re-open basic banking branches in every neighbourhood that offer low-interest rate, small-value lines of credit to everyone to stop predatory lending across Canada (including through partnering with Canada Post outlets for postal banking, as TD started to do in November 2022 but then paused and then cancelled);
7. Require banks to give customers access to the money they deposit by cheque as soon as the cheque clears through the inter-banking clearance system;
8. To stop fraud scams from taking huge amounts from customers’ bank accounts and credit cards, require banks to give customers the choice to set dollar-amount levels and geographic-location rules for notifications of suspicious account and credit card transactions, and require banks and telecommunication companies to prove that they took all due diligence steps to determine whether a transaction was fraudulent and to stop all fraudulent transactions, with the penalty of being required to reimburse the customer the total amount lost, and give customers the right to appeal the freezing of accounts and cards and to apply directly to the OBSI for compensation if the bank’s actions were unjustifiable and harmed the customer;
9. Require banks and trust companies to disclose the profit/loss record for any branch proposed to be closed, to allow for a full public review of whether the closure is justified;
10. Require banks and trust companies to prove that they have a fair, responsible and very good service, lending and investment record every year for the past 10 years as a mandatory condition for any financial institution bidding on federal government contracts;
11. Strengthen key consumer protection rules, and require the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada (FCAC) to do unannounced, mystery-shopper audits to find violations, and to identify violators and fine them (the FCAC hasn’t done unannounced audits since 2005, tipped off the banks in March 2017 about the audit they did through the rest of 2017 on abuses, and then allowed the banks to see the draft audit results and suggest changes that weakened the report) and establish an independent, effective whistleblower protection system for the employees and everyone else who has any interactions with any financial institution;
12. Require all banks to be covered by the Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investments, and allow financial consumers and investors to complain directly to OBSI without having to go through a financial institution’s internal complaint system, and make OBSI’s rulings binding;
13. Require the FCAC to name every bank and financial institution that it finds has violated any rule and, given the big banks each make billions in profit annually, to fine violators a minimum of $1 million for each violation, and a sliding scale of higher fines must be required to be imposed up to the maximum $50 million penalty for the most serious, systemic violations;
14. Close all the loopholes that allow Canada’s banks (and other big businesses) to evade paying taxes in Canada by pretending they make their money through companies they own in low-tax countries, and impose a special tax (as England and Australia have) on any Canadian business or bank that has excessively high profits like Canada’s Big Banks have had in the past several years, and;
15. Require the Big Banks and other financial institutions to cut the pay of their CEO and other top executives to no more than 40 times their lowest paid employee (as in some European countries).

To see more details about why enforcement needs to be strengthened as proposed above in points #6-9, please click here.

For more information, see Democracy Watch’s
Bank Accountability Campaign