Editor, The Times:
You'll wonder where the banksters went when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent (“Canadians trust their toothpaste more than banks,” March 24, 2017, Vancouver Sun).
It’s not as simple as that but is sure is heartening to see that Canadians are not fooled. As the Bruce Cockburn song goes, “People see through you.” But! Then who could fail to see the malfeasance of Canada’s big six (or is it big five? I’ve heard both figures bandied about). No wonder Canadians trust their toothpaste more than banks.
Let's have a brief review here. Cheating on the LIBOR – falsely or deflating their rates on money borrowed from each other, bringing in workers from India, getting their staff to train them, then laying off those same staff – that one stunk so bad it got shot down but one has to ask who even thought that one up.
Then there are the perfectly “legitimate” actions, such as charging usurious credit card interest rates, fees and God knows what else to fatten up their bottom line.
And there's that very poorly publicized matter of some $114 billion of Canadian taxpayers’ money given to Canadian banks during and after the great banking crisis in 2007-08 (note here I'm not suggesting that this was a bad thing in itself. It’s just that we had to endure the utter nonsense about Harper being the great manager and the great solvency of Canada's banks.
Of course we got none of this from the Financial Post. What we got was how the banks are going international, guided by the likes of Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, two of the entities most responsible for the great U.S. banking crash of 2007-08
However, as the great song by The Who goes, “We won’t get fooled again.” When it comes to Canada's banks, despite all the coverup by the Financial Post and others, the Canadian people are not fooled
After all, if you can’t top a tube of toothpaste, you really are in trouble.
Dennis Peacock
Clearwater, B.C.