Madam Speaker, it is a privilege and very exciting actually to be participating in response to the minister's statement. I think there were some very positive things said by the minister and I want to commend him for those kinds of things, particularly for the fact that he recognizes that there is a problem. The difficulty is that I am not quite so sure that he has a solution to the problem. This is where I think we have to focus our attention.
It is very interesting the way this particular paper has been presented to us. The first omission I find that really bothers me a lot is that there is no particular and no direct reference to the recommendations that were contained in the "Taking Care of Small Business" report by the Standing Committee on Industry.
There were many recommendations in that particular report that gave direct impetus to the kinds of strategic planning that ought to be done in the Department of Industry and in the government at large.
It became very clear during that particular discussion that there was a major gap in the recognition of the contribution that small business makes to the creation of jobs in Canada. It is true that there have been a number of new jobs created in Canada but for the government to take credit for this is not correct. The jobs were created by entrepreneurs and those people want to develop themselves.
I commend the particular suggestion that there is going to be a particular place for small businesses to enter into government procurement contracts, contracts that are $125,000 or less but larger than $25,000. It raises all kinds of interesting questions that my hon. colleague raised not so long ago when he spoke about a particular department other than the Department of Industry in which certain contracts were divided up into smaller components so that indeed they would not have to meet certain regulatory provisions.
Is this a possibility now that certain procurements may be made so that larger procurements will be broken up into $125,000 ones, or will that not be the case? Will others be combined? This not clear.
I want to pay particular attention to the Small Businesses Loans Act. That ceiling was increased from $4 billion to $12 billion. The Canadian Federation of Independent Business says that particular program is not working so well. This morning I heard the hon. minister say on Canada AM that small businesses liked it so much that they used it up right away, within 18 months of it having been increased.
The interesting thing is that banks have to a large extent used the SBLA to cover their particular risks, so that it became a subsidy to the banks. It is small wonder that with this kind of help the larger banks in Canada can show a combined profit of something like $4 billion. Is this the kind of thing that small business is supposed to be supporting, so that the big banks can
make big profits like that? The Small Businesses Loans Act had no small contribution to that particular sector.
That is not all. The other part of this is that there seems to be a suggestion that subsidies and grants to businesses create jobs. I submit to you, Madam Speaker, and to the minister and to this House that is probably false, that in fact when you have a subsidy which may create a job over on this side, it loses a job over on the other side because this business over here has to pay larger taxes, has to pay increased interest rates in order to subsidize that particular business over there. That is misleading if nothing else.
There is another thing that happens when you do this sort of thing. You divert investment from those businesses that are solid to those businesses that have some kind of artificial government support and shoring up.
Business should be allowed to stand on its own feet. Where I commend the minister is where he says that the government should create an environment so that private businesses can succeed. I endorse that 100 per cent. I commend him for that statement. Now may he go ahead and prove that he believes that by taking away subsidies and grants for small business.
Much was made about trade and much was made about the imbalance in trade when it comes to tourism. There is a suggestion that some $100 million is going to be spent in the tourism industry, approximately $50 million for the setting up of a tourism commission, another $50 million from $15 million, so it is not quite the $50 million in addition, for a promotion budget that has been increased from $15 million to $50 million. That suggests more than a triple amount of dollars spent in promotion.
I ask the minister and the House whether they really believe that spending three times as much money will result in three times as many tourists coming to Canada and spending three times as much money than if that promotion budget were not there.
Madam Speaker, I suggest to you that there may be an increase but it will not be in direct proportion to the increase of public spending in that particular sector.
The minister said not too long ago and he states in his orange book that the solution is not in throwing dollars at a problem but rather to solve the problem. The best people to solve the problem are the entrepreneurs. They understand the business. They understand the marketplace. They know the value of the dollar. They know how to efficiently deploy those dollars. They know how to employ people. They know how to get good work out of people. Throwing dollars at the problem is not the answer. We need to recognize that applies in the tourism industry as well as in every other industry.
There has been a suggestion that the infrastructure program is a major innovative development in this particular strategic document that has been presented to the House. The infrastructure program that currently exists, I believe it is $6 billion on the one side and that is going to be matched by the provincial government and the municipal government, is a beautiful pot of money. It has become known in many quarters as boccie Canada, and builds boccie courts.
The infrastructure program needs to be recognized for what it is. It is a program that benefits particular places. I want to really commend the British Columbia government. So far I know of no instance, and there may be some since I last looked at the list, when the money has not been spent on bona fide infrastructure programs such as highways, bridges, water systems, sewer systems, things of that sort. That is significant but building boccie courts is not. Building canoe museums is not. These are the kinds of things.
I want to move into another area which has to do with the science and technology program. We have had a review this spring of the science and technology program all across Canada and we had the hon. secretary of state go across Canada holding various discussions with business people, interest groups, looking at what should be done in this particular area.
Three things became very clear. When they put together the summary forum which took place here in Ottawa in mid-October they came up with a bunch of round tables with some very high powered, highly trained, highly developed and intelligent people who made some beautiful statements. When I examine those particular conclusions and compare them with conclusions of 1940, 56 years ago, there are in many instances very few substantive differences between the problems articulated today and the problems articulated some 50 years ago.
When a noted journalist put things together and compared the two he recognized, in particular when it came to the industrial application of the technological and scientific studies and R and D research that had been done primarily through government funding, that the minimal effect was industrial application.
Some $6 billion is being spent in that area plus $1 billion being spent on tax credits. That is a total of $7 billion. In this fall's statement the Auditor General said that we were not getting an effective resolution and application of those dollars. We were not getting the kinds of results we should be getting.
The time has come for us to do some new thinking, not to go through the old thinking and do it all over again. We know what the problem is. It is time we build a new innovative economy
that provides for the private entrepreneur the ability to make money and to give everybody jobs.