Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee.
I am not representing any group. I was asked to address the committee, I guess to provide some general economic perspective. I'm the chair of the economics department at McGill. I guess, particularly having heard the previous speakers, I'll begin with a general overview of I think some things we should keep in mind in looking at the kinds of programs that I imagine your committee is thinking of and perhaps try to avoid losing sight of the forest for the trees.
You, I presume, are interested in general in the economic position of all minorities in Canada, linguistic minorities in particular, and more generally in things that will encourage economic growth and development in Canada. Economic growth depends, of course, on investment, and that means human capital investment, as I think both the previous speakers have touched upon, and also investment in physical capital.
The question is, what role can the Canadian government be playing in ensuring that appropriate investments take place among minority linguistic communities and in general among those who can contribute to economic growth? By far the most important of these, of course—and this is where I want to suggest that we not lose sight of the forest for the trees—by far the most important role, I think, that the government can play in this, which the Canadian government has traditionally done very well, is simply to protect the rights of minorities and the conditions for investment, the creation of new businesses, and, in general, the installation of physical capital, conditions that encourage people to invest and to make communities grow, whether by linguistic minorities or not.
As I say, if we look around the world at the way things generally work, the Canadian government has an excellent record of doing this. We don't want to be complacent about that, of course, but at the same time I think we should keep in mind that by far the most important thing the Canadian government has done in this area is simply to create those general conditions and maintain them, and to also maintain a climate in which people know that they can count upon these things.
There have, of course, been some lapses. There have been situations in which minorities have felt that they lack the certainty about the future or the stability necessary to make investments.
In particular, in Quebec there have been periods of substantial uncertainty, which have no doubt impeded investment here. It's a commonplace here in Quebec, not only among the English or other linguistic minority groups, but among francophones, that the situation of uncertainty that has existed, certainly in the past and less so now, I hope, has been an impediment to investment.
The record of the government in providing these conditions is of course not perfect—we live in a difficult world—but it has been very good, and I think we need primarily to keep our eye on those successes and try to maintain them.
If we look beyond that at barriers that may arise to investments, both in education and in physical capital, and also at the question of what specifically—if anything—the government might think of doing in the way of programs to address these things, I think that again we have to take an overview and ask what problems exist that can't be solved through the normal mechanisms for individuals making investments. What are the barriers that sometimes arise, such as barriers in access to capital, that the government may help people in overcoming?
Now, there are some circumstances, certainly, in which access to capital markets is a problem. One frequently hears, for example, of cases in which women in developing countries have very limited access to capital markets and where programs to provide capital have made a substantial difference.
There's little indication I can see that Canada is in this position. On the whole in this country we don't experience the overt discrimination against minorities that exists in some places, certainly not at an institutional level, and certainly not involving the official languages of the country. I think it's unlikely that English or French minorities in this country experience restricted access to traditional capital markets through banks or other forms of financing for business.
I think that if we are going to be considering programs to address problems in the general pattern of access to the requirements for investing, we need to look carefully at what is wrong and needs to be fixed and consider whether existing programs are still doing their jobs. We need to look at these things in the context of some sensible policy design for the problems that are being solved.
I think the general principle that should underlie all attempts to address the economic position of minorities is access to these forms of investment in education and human capital and physical capital that allow people to improve their economic situation. I think we need to evaluate programs very carefully, whether or not they've been existing for a long time, to ask whether they're helping us to achieve that and whether they're overcoming some genuine barrier.
That's all I'll say for now. Thank you.