INDY Committee News Release
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STANDING COMMITTEE ON INDUSTRY |
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COMITÉ PERMANENT DE L'INDUSTRIE
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COMMUNIQUÉ |
NEWS RELEASE |
Standing Committee on Industry
Industry Committee to Question Bankers about Year 2000 Preparedness
OTTAWA 18 February 1998 - The House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry announced today that it would be meeting with representatives of the major Canadian banks and with the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions on Thursday, February 19, 1998 at 9:00 a.m. in Room 253-D, Centre Block. The meeting is to see how well this leading part of the Canadian financial system is planning to cope with the Year 2000 problem, which arises from the last two digits of year number changing over from '99 to '00. Many older computer systems, programs and electronic devices mistakenly think the year is 1900 with potentially disastrous consequences.
"Most of us have friends or family with bright new credit cards with 2000 expiry dates that will not work in some card swipe machines, or have heard of someone's mortgage repayments going crazy when the mortgage was extended past the year 2000," said Industry Committee Chair, Susan Whelan, MP for Essex, Ontario. "This is only an embarrassment and an inconvenience at present, but it does illustrate the pervasiveness of the problem and alerts us to its potential future impact. The international banking community is going as far as to recommend that both 31 December 1999 and 1 January 2000 be bank holidays to safeguard the international financial system. The Committee is very interested in hearing how well prepared are Canadian banks."
The House of Commons Standing Committee has already met with the Chair of the Task Force Year 2000, Mr. Jean Monty of BCE Inc, to discuss the report A Call for Action, Report of Task Force Year 2000 which, unprecentedly for an official report, was tabled four months ahead of original schedule because of the urgency of the situation.
The Committee has also met with Citizenship and Immigration Canada, Human Resources Development Canada, and the Software Human Resource Council to consider ways of easing the entry of skilled labour with Year 2000 skills into Canada.
The Standing Committee will be holding further meetings on this topic after the budget.
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