Mr. Speaker, I thank the House very much for the opportunity to participate in this debate. Through you, Mr. Speaker, I address my comments to the hon. parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Industry.
Earlier today, the hon. member was speaking about the need to raise capital for small business. We recognize that capital for small and large business is difficult to raise. I wonder if I could get his comments in two areas.
The first is the effective guarantees on the ability of small business to raise capital, specifically the use of joint and several guarantees. This has the effect of making whoever is signing a guarantee on behalf of a company with the deepest pockets to be the first the guarantor goes to in the event of default, even though there is the opportunity obviously in a guarantee position to limit guarantees. If there is one party to the guarantee with significantly deeper pockets that party is sometimes reluctant to
get involved in guaranteeing a small emerging business. That is one item I would ask the government to consider.
The other is the notion of extending the use of RRSPs beyond the traditional to the new and very effective use in home ownership. That would be under very strict controls, but consider the notion of extending the use of RRSP money and an arm's length transaction to supporting and providing capital for small and emerging private business as opposed to public companies.
There is quite a distinction between a company that needs to raise $1 million and one that needs to raise $10 million. If businesses were able to raise money under very strict conditions on an arm's length basis by using their RRSP or RRSP contributions that could be a very significant capital pool for the use in developing small business and emerging new technologies in Canada.