Good morning, Mr. Chair.
Good morning, colleagues.
In Ottawa, instead of “all roads lead to Rome”, it's “all roads lead to INDU”. This is my second time on this committee in my time in Parliament. For those of you I haven't worked with before, I think it's good to know who we are working with sometimes instead of just faces yelling at each other in the House of Commons.
My educational background is in economics. Prior to politics, I managed the sponsored research portfolio at the University of Calgary and was involved in academic tech transfer for over a decade. I previously served as the Minister of State for Western Economic Diversification, so I looked at all of those issues from a different side of the coin.
I've been working with colleagues who sit on the committee now on the issue of artificial intelligence and emerging technologies for the last couple of years. It's nice to be back on this committee dealing with what I think are really important issues that often aren't ballot questions but that I think are fundamental to what the Canadian economy will look like in the next 10 years. It's a pleasure to serve on this committee again and to serve with all of you.
Mr. Chair, since this is our first meeting since the summer and the summer was busy—there was a lot of news—I will say that I did post notice of a motion with regard to the Futurpreneur program. This is a notice of motion that I gave on Tuesday.
I'll move:
That, given recent reports that ISED's taxpayer funded loan program for “future entrepreneurs” has resulted in $45.9 million in writeoffs for taxpayers, and there may be conflict of interest concerns regarding a grant recipient and their relationship to a current senior member of the federal cabinet, the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology undertake a study of the future entrepreneur program comprising of two meetings, invite the following witnesses and others as deemed appropriate by the committee, and report its findings to the House:
Karen Greve Young—Futurpreneur CEO;
François-Philippe Champagne—Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada; and
Mélanie Joly—Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Colleagues, the impetus for this motion comes from an article written by Blacklock's Reporter that was published on Monday, September 9, 2024. The title of the article is “Write-Offs Eclipse $45,000,000”. The nut of the story is “Write-offs under a taxpayer-backed loan program for 'future entrepreneurs' have cost over $45 million, says a Department of Industry audit. Best-known borrowers under the Futurpreneur Canada program include Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly's husband”.
If you read through this article, the audit in particular raises some problems. It suggests that there isn't actually benchmarking data for whether or not the funds are doing what they're supposed to do. For me, programs like this are designed.... I'm not talking to filibuster here; I just want to give my thoughts.
Programs like this are designed to give young entrepreneurs a heads-up. Given the changes in the Canadian economy over the last several years and where the Canadian economy is going, programs like this should be designed to maximize economic output. They should be measured for success. There should be alterations made to perhaps granting eligibility. That should be done on a regular basis because, as colleagues, we have a fiduciary responsibility to taxpayers. You know, 45 million dollars' worth of writeoffs.... The article states that close to 20% of the loans were in arrears. To me, if you're sitting on a corporate board—and I know some of you have—you would be looking at those numbers and going, “Hmm, maybe we have a problem here.”
If there's no problem, the study will show that there's no problem. However, I would like to determine what the conflict of interest rules are and if they're adequate on this program, and also if there need to be adjustments made to the granting criteria such that perhaps the percentage of loans in arrears should go down.
I hope you'll consider this motion in that spirit—the spirit of improving the program—but certainly the news article was concerning for me, and I hope we can dispense of that with a quick study.
Thank you, Chair.