Mr. Speaker, my hon. friend seems to have a philosophical thing about state intervention. It was a major theme at the outset of his speech. I hope he will express the same views to his agricultural constituents, the farmers in this constituency. I hope he will express the same ideas on the formation of the auto pact. I hope he will express the same thing to his business constituents on the small business development corporation, or with the oil patch on the tax investments and the uncollected tax. There is the aircraft industry too. I could go on and on.
Canada has had a history of a mixed economy. There are many good reasons for it. One of the main reasons has been the size of the elephant we sleep with to the south of us. It has been considered necessary from time to time not with any ideology in mind but from a practical point of view to deal with issues as they have arisen.
State intervention is not new. I am surprised the hon. member is treating this as if it were some kind of new conjuring. It is not new. I am a little older than the hon. member. Maybe the hon. member does not remember the difficulty Canadian musicians had in being heard and the almost impossibility of getting Canadian productions over radio until the CRTC came into the picture. And that was state intervention too, I should say.
Look at what happened. Look at the result. The result of that investment is that all across Canada, whether it is in French Canada or English Canada, there is a thriving music industry today. It largely came about because those people, those performers and creators, for the first time were able to have their music heard in a large forum.
My hon. friend says that the business of granting loan guarantees will create an elitism. I respectfully suggest to him that this kind of intervention will prevent elitism, If investment money is only going to go to the strongest, the survival of the fittest, that to me is elitism. It seems to me that one of the functions of these loan guarantees is to prevent that.
Finally, I would suggest to the member that in spite of the fact that he has tried to create this illusion, this is not new money we are talking about here. This is a redirection of money. We are not adding to or increasing the deficit.
I suggest that he take those things into account.