Mr. Speaker, it is with real pleasure that I respond to the hon. member's concerns and also his questions.
First of all, he is absolutely correct. I do come from an agricultural riding that depends on agriculture, small business and the production of oil. I might tell the hon. member that in our agriculture policy we clearly discuss with producers how we might save taxpayers' dollars, how we might become more efficient in the defence of the industry of agriculture without spending more money but in fact spending less, and how we would not justify spending for agriculture in areas unless they be beyond the control of producers. I would suspect that Bill C-31 does not affect film producers or the film industry in areas beyond their control.
I heard from small business that they want an end to grants and tax concessions, loan guarantees. It is not fair. If I do not happen to be the beneficiary of the program then I am paying my taxes for someone who is the beneficiary of the program. I may go out of business trying to pay the taxes to keep my competitor in business. It is a very unfair appropriation of tax dollars, whether it be in the form of grants or in the form of loan guarantees or whatever. It is a distortion in the marketplace when what helps Peter is paid for by Paul and many times they are in the same industry.
I know I have the support of small business in my concerns with this bill. The oil industry, by the way, has similar concerns. I have spoken in this House about the foolishness of spending millions, billions perhaps, of taxpayers' dollars on megaprojects such as Hibernia when we are not sure that they are fundamentally sound projects.
The marketplace has a very good nose for sniffing out where investments should be made and where they should not be made and government has a notoriously bad reputation for being able to sniff out what is a good business venture and what is a poor business venture.
I want to respond briefly to the hon. member's concerns over our giant neighbour to the south and the effect that that has on our culture. He mentioned specifically the music recording industry and the fact that radio stations in Canada have to play a certain percentage of Canadian content in their air time. Perhaps it might be even good to review whether that has had a positive effect on the recording industry in Canada.
I spoke some time ago with the general manager of a radio station who felt that this ruling had limited the growth of the recording industry in Canada. He said there were very few recording artists in Canada who had ever made it until they made it big in the U.S. Because of some of the restrictions in our recording industry they tended to leave the country and become Americans rather than maintain their allegiance to and close association with Canada.
It is not true in all cases. We certainly have many recording artists in Canada whom we are very proud of. There is some doubt as to whether or not this Canadian content rule has been a blessing or a curse to the Canadian recording industry. In some ways it has suppressed the industry rather than assisted it. I guess time will tell. We certainly do not have tons of testimonials to be proud of. Even today most Canadian recording artists do not make it big in Canada until they have made it big in the U.S.
We have to be looking at our own confidence and the fact that we do not consider someone to be of any value because government dollars go to support them. We expect and measure value based on the saleability of what is being produced for us. That is the true measure of quality and the true measure of culture in Canada.