I am old enough, and my mom was a banker (retired now) from the early 1960s.

Banks have always been scummy, but they used to fear the government and competition. Now that the government has almost no hold and "competition" has been replaced with a collusive oligopoly, they fear nothing - and will do anything to squeeze another penny out of you.

Back in the early days of ATMs, BMO sent out a letter to their customers, on behalf of the CEO. It said in no uncertain terms that BMO would NEVER charge for access to a human being. I wish I'd kept it, because I'd like to throw it back in their face.

Based on my mom's stories, they probably started the aggressive up-selling in the 1990s. That's when they started to implement and enforce quotas for opening accounts, etc..

They get in trouble for it every year and occasionally get fined, but they never have to either change their behaviour or pay more than a tiny fraction of the profit they made by this practice.

Here's the other thing: The bank doesn't even want you. Your financial dealings are too small to make enough profit per interaction for the bank. They'd be happier if they could get rid of their bottom 70%, and focus only on customers with large amounts of money. Since they can't legally throw out customers for being poor, they keep increasing the fees to those customers.

Banks in Canada are scum, pure and simple.