Madam Speaker, I will agree with my hon. friend. I certainly concur with an emphasis on small business but I would remind my hon. friend that small businesses rely on customers. If farmers are going bankrupt and factories and mines are closing across this country, there are not going to be many customers.
We have to make the link between the two. People living on reduced unemployment insurance with no hope of a job and people living on reduced social assistance are certainly not going to be viable customers for the small businesses that my friend mentions.
I agree that the Canada investment fund, a fund that we proposed during the election, is important to get venture capital to small businesses. I support that. I hope members opposite will review the proposal of the New Democratic Party. It was reasonable. There are some similarities to that of the Liberal Party. We share some good ideas on that. The hon. member across and I both share the necessity of ensuring that part of our economy is stimulated.
I would like to mention two other points on small business. I note that the budget says that Canadian business centres will be established in every province. I hope that was just a lapse. We from the territories have to pick up on this lapse and hope that there will be one in Yukon and the Northwest Territories as well. I am assuming that there was a temporary amnesia there. We do have two territories that cover one-third of Canada's land mass.
The second point I would like to make is with regard to the negotiations, and I applaud the government for doing this, with banks and financial institutions in terms of venture capital to small business. While it is not my place in this period to ask a question, I will phrase it as a comment. I hope that in this consultation the government will raise with financial institutions the possibility of looking at a formula whereby the savings
that come into a particular financial institution from a community or a portion thereof will be reinvested in that community.
One of the main problems we have is that a very large proportion of Canadians' savings is not being invested in Canada. It is being invested offshore. We must encourage Canadians to invest in their own country, something that the province of Quebec and Quebecers learned a long time ago and we could take a lesson from.