Editor’s Note: Valley residents already experienced this issue closer to home when ScotiaBank closed its Maynooth branch in January 2017, incorporating the business into its Bancroft branch. Branch customers in Hastings Highlands received six months’ notice of that closure.
In a recent media release, Cheryl Gallant, MP for Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke, the Opposition Shadow Minister for Northern Ontario Economic Development, calls for a federal action to improve competition to Big Banks.
“With the Big Banks closing down more and more rural bank branches, action is needed to make it easier for banking solutions to fill the smaller markets being abandoned by the Big Banks,” said Gallant. (Pictured above with ScotiaBank Mike Brydges about Beachburg branch closure.) “Many small communities have neither internet access nor a transit system to a larger commercial centre.”
Since the Liberals were first elected, a dozen local bank branches across Northern Ontario have been closed, including CIBC branches in Englehart and Terrace Bay, TD in Marathon, both TD and CIBC in Atikokan, and now the Scotiabank in Beachburg is to be closed in June.
“Recent changes to the Banking Act by the Trudeau Liberals have made it easier for the big five banks to close rural branches,” said Gallant. “Rural Canadians, seniors and the vulnerable are being forced to live in banking deserts, and Parliament needs to act.”
“It is the most vulnerable in our communities who rely on having physical bank branches,” observed Gallant.
During the last Parliament, the Trudeau Liberals passed Bill C-86 which set out the process for banks to close rural branches. Banks in rural areas must notify the municipalities and customers of the closure six months in advance.
“Seniors, persons living with disabilities, and lower income Canadians need access to physical banks branches, and all Trudeau did was clear the path for banks to abandon them,” noted Gallant.
Gallant,C. (2020,Jan.27) Big Banks Abandon Rural Canada [media release]
Photo submitted