To start off, there are several issues I would like to discuss. We can use the analysts here to give us briefings on things like IRB, now called ITB. For those people who don't know, this was industrial and regional benefits; now it's called industrial and technological benefits. These are the commitments made by defence suppliers or contractors to the government, equal to the contract value that they are supposed to invest or spend in Canada.
The definitions have been changed. Now defence contracts under $100 million are exempted from the ITB. I would like to know more about it, because that is an excellent tool to stimulate economic growth here in the country.
Then there are the economic development agencies, such as FedDev, FedNor, and the western one. I think we will get a feeling that the investments they are making are not uniformly spread across the various regions. As for Ottawa, the FedDev investment per capita in Ottawa is minimal compared to the amount they are investing in southern and western Ontario. I would like to look into those things.
Then we have a strategic aerospace and defence initiative. Huge funds are there to help aerospace and defence companies to invest in R and D. I would like to know the progress that has been made. We don't know the total fund that is available under this program and how much is being used.
Finally, coming to the main issue of small and medium-sized manufacturing companies and the lack of capital that is available, today in this country if I want to start up a manufacturing company to manufacture this pen and the start-up costs are $20 million, trust me, even if I have 25%, 30%, or 40% of the capital, there is no commercial bank that will be willing to fund me. There is a lack of financing available for small and medium-sized companies.
Just to contrast, 15 years back Canada was number two or number three in the world in aluminum manufacturing. In the last 15 years we have just had one tiny aluminum smelter set up here, and during the same 15 years, oil-rich Arab countries have set up five world-class aluminum smelters in a radius of 1,000 kilometres. We have to examine why.
I can tell you that one of the reasons manufacturing companies are flourishing there is that state-owned industrial development banks are there to step in and take part of the risk along with the entrepreneurs. We don't have an industrial policy here. Those oil-rich countries, like us, are rich in oil, but they don't have technology, they don't have expertise, and they don't have the market. We have all those things, but what they have is a clearly stated manufacturing policy or industrial policy with an objective of growing the share of the manufacturing sector in the GDP from 0.01% to a modest 3% to 4%. With that policy in hand, they have created state institutions to back that up, and they are implementing it.
Those are the kinds of things I think we should look into.
Thank you.