Arthur Milnes
Northern News Services

NNSL (Aug 28/98) - The dialogue will continue.

That's the view of Bill McFarlane, area manager for Alberta North and the NWT with the Royal Bank of Canada now that the city of Yellowknife has passed a resolution calling on Ottawa to disallow the bank mergers.

City council made the move Monday night and says the mergers should be stopped until means are put in place to ensure banks are responsible to the communities where they operate.

It is believed Yellowknife is the first municipality in Canada to have made such a declaration in response to the controversial proposed mergers of four of Canada's main banks into two.

In fact, McFarlane said his company heartily agrees with the final paragraph of the city's motion.

It called upon council to be responsive to requests to work with the banks and other community interests to encourage a debate about the future of financial sector in the city and across the North.

Responding to concerns raised Monday at council about the future of banking in the smaller NWT communities, McFarlane said Northerners themselves are ending their banking isolation.

"Our Yellowknife branch has a higher than average use of the alternative technologies such as telephone banking and the Internet," he said.

"That's levelling for people in the North and they may have access to things they didn't have five years ago... People in the North are embracing those technologies."

Pointing out that Yellowknife's Royal branch has an annual payroll of about $1 million and how his bank has donated $50,000 to local charities in recent months, McFarlane said he and his bank are more than willing to continue discussing the merger idea among Northerners.

Bank officials were in the city for public meetings surrounding the issue only last week.