Prompted by the Minority NDP party, the government who are operating under a minority mandate in Canada are getting serious about questioning the Banks and not just their ATM fees. but all fees.

What intrigued me one headline, and this comment in the body.

But most consumer advocates would be delighted if the Commons finance committee succeeds in getting an ATM cost breakdown from the banks.

Source: TheStar.com – Business – Convenience at what cost?

If they saw the costs in running ATM’s, this would hurt not help their argument.  I would speculate that the costs would be in the billions when you aggregate all the Banks’ data.

If they were serious about ATM fees they should include the entire Canadian ATM fleet of 50K machines, not just the 16K Bank machines.  This would make the example more credible.

Some stats on Canadian ATM’s from the article:

ATM use across the country

Canadian banks operated 16,160 ATMs in 2004. That dropped to 15,960 in 2005, but rose to 16,190 last year.

The ATM network in Canada (including non-bank or “white label” machines) has expanded substantially. The total was 51,097 in 2005, up from 42,773 in 2000.

ATM cash withdrawals fell to 691.8 million in 2005 from 875.1 million in 2000, a decline of about 20 per cent.

Fewer ATM withdrawals are partly due to consumers using cash-back features at retail point-of-sale terminals, bankers say. Surveys show 65 per cent of people who used debit cards for purchases have asked for cash back, from 54 per cent in 2000.