Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to talk about taking care of small business.
One of the things I want to concentrate on here in my 10 minutes in speaking about what I think small business needs in this country is government involvement in small business. I am going to select for my example ACOA, the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, which the government is up to its arm pits in donations, grants and subsidies on.
We all know there has been a shift in political ideals in recent years. The government now talks about a fiscally responsible way of operating business, how to cut dollars and how to operate efficiently which is a good change for this government. However, I think when you look at where this government has come from from a sociological point of view, you only have to look at what Michael Thomas once said, just because you have been bad at socialism doesn't mean you will be good at capitalism. That fits well in my mind with this particular government because I do not think this government has a real good idea of what capitalism really is. I am going to demonstrate that by talking about ACOA.
The Business Council of British Columbia has recently issued a report on cutting the deficit. The business council gave all kinds of suggestions on how the government might be able to do that. One of the suggestions it made was to phase out all three regional development agencies.
I know there was some talk here earlier about regional economic development programs but it is relative today to talk about that in the line with small business. The relevance is we have our hands into small business in two ways. We tax them to death and we create a terrible inequity between small business. Why do we do that? On the one hand we give some grants and subsidies. Note that it is non-taxable, just a gift. It is like winning the Lotto 6/49. The competitor down the street has to borrow money to try to get some kind of capital back into his business or if they want expansion they have to borrow money. ACOA comes along in many cases in Atlantic Canada and just issues a cheque.
I have done a lot of talking to some of the recipients of ACOA grants in Atlantic Canada. We have also had some discussions with ACOA. I want to give members an idea of some of the grants that come out of this operation, not to mention the fact that the management of ACOA is well known for its spending habits. I really do not have to get into that because that is known all across Canada.
Let us just take a look at some of the grants that are given to small business in Atlantic Canada. For instance, Cynthia Billard in Newfoundland received $37,105 to construct two housekeeping units. That is a gift from the taxpayers of this country. I somehow think that if somebody came knocking at my door in Fraser Valley West, British Columbia and asked if I would like to give Cynthia Billard some money toward building two housekeeping units out of my taxes, my answer would be no. You do what the other people do when they want to expand on their housekeeping units. They borrow money or they save their money through profits from using their other units and they allow the expansion that way. We do not give money to some and not to others. It creates a terrible imbalance in small business.
I will run through a lot more of these grants. This government is quite well known for giving grants around the country.
Let's take Mr. Stedman Brophy. He advertised in hunting magazines and attended trade shows. He was given $5,000. Congratulations. They have given $5,000 of taxpayers' money away. How did that benefit the other people in the same line of business? It does not.