Mr. Speaker, I just have a few comments for the hon. minister and I would like his feedback on these comments.
First, in terms of banks not lending to small business, I think it is understandable that they are not doing so as readily as one would expect them to. The reasons have been made clear to me in my constituency.
My constituency also depends on small businesses, as do most across the country. These small business people are farmers and other types of small business people. They have told me that the biggest problem, as the hon. member alluded to, is over-regulation, too much paperwork, that it is too expensive just to set a business up and to operate a business because of regulation and, in particular, the new environmental regulations. Environmental reports that have to be filled out by banks to lend to a small business have made it too expensive for banks to lend.
The second reason I am given for banks not lending to small business is that there is just not a high enough profit margin. Taxation in this country is too high. Too much of what would be profit and what is profit goes to taxes. They are too high.
The third area is the lack of confidence that business people have in the economy. This lack of confidence is due, certainly in large part, to our incredibly large debt and our incredibly large annual deficit. If business people do not have confidence themselves why would banks have confidence enough to lend to them?