Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to participate in this debate and I agree with the minister when he says that this bill may be part of the government strategy to sometimes be dull and boring. Indeed, this is not a romantic piece of legislation, and it does not generate a lot of controversy.
As you know, Bill C-12 is an act to amend the Canada Business Corporations Act and to make consequential amendments to other acts.
Therefore, this legislation purports to amend the Canada Business Corporations Act. It allows for the implementation of technological innovations such as electronic filing and facsimile transmission of documents, it simplifies certain statutory procedures and record-keeping and filing requirements, and it makes the administration of the Act more effective.
Its object is to modernize the federal Canada Business Corporations Act. This act, which was passed in 1975, is a commercial law regulating about 190,000 Canadian businesses which were incorporated under it.
Half of the 500 largest businesses in the country were incorporated under that legislation. The government wants to amend the act in two stages, Bill C-12 being the first of those two stages.
A review of this legislation shows, as we in the opposition see it, four major changes which will allow businesses to improve their operations from a technical point of view.
The first of these changes is the fact that businesses will now be able to use electronic means to transmit documents. This should facilitate communication between businesses and the department.
Another provision allows current directors to appoint, under certain circumstances and if the rules of the corporation so provide, a limited number of directors. It must be pointed out that until now shareholders were the only ones who could appoint the directors.
The third change is to the effect that, from now on, companies will have to keep official documents such as accounting records and files for a minimum of six years. Obviously, we agree that this measure should help reduce the paper burden, but we wonder if a period of six years is sufficiently long.
Finally, privately-held corporations will no longer have to disclose financial information. This measure is criticized by the Order of Chartered Accountants, which worries about the impact it will have on the accounting profession. We must also realize that this measure will remove an injustice that may have existed before, in that provincially licensed companies had an unfair advantage because they did not have to disclose such information; federally licensed companies will now have the same status.
It is not easy to take position on such a slim bill. However, we must realize that, like other bills, it will take up a great deal of time and energy. That is why opposition members feel uncomfortable with this bill because there is still so much to do. There is so much to do with regards to the economy, to small and medium sized businesses and their development, that the government is not doing. Let us take, for instance, the paper burden small and medium sized businesses especially must carry, just to serve the government.
According to some studies, these businesses spend one out of five days dealing with government red tape. The government is aware of that, as it acknowledges in the red book. On April 28, the Minister of Industry announced a 29-member committee would be set up to study the issue of red tape among other things. As everyone knows, including the officials of his department, there have been numerous reports and the solution proposed by the government-it is like a reflex of this government-is to form a committee to study the issue; 29 people from coast to coast will consider the issue of government red tape. It is a waste of time.
Some adjustments would probably be easy to make, however. Knowing how competent federal public servants are, they could consult with their provincial counterparts, including those from Quebec, who are very competent.
Adjustments could be made to the program, and the procedure that companies must follow for exports, for example, could be simplified. Why not try to come up with ways to make it easier for small and medium sized businesses and others to export, which is vital for the economic development of Canada and Quebec? Why not refine what is offered to small and medium-sized businesses to encourage research and development? The Liberal Party of Canada made a big issue of it in the red book.
Why not ask officials, without striking a committee, to find ways of streamlining the forms, of reducing the delays in order to help small and medium sized businesses effectively, tangibly, pragmatically to do research and development? We know how complicated it is; I worked on it before. It is extremely complicated for a company to qualify for research and development tax credits, for example.
Easy ways must be found to help companies in that regard, just see to it. Companies must be helped to find ways to modernize their equipment, to give them the training that exists on the market to increase their productivity, to be more competitive internationally. Everything must be done to ensure that companies take the total-quality approach more and more. This is essential if we want our companies to be recognized, both here as subcontractors and internationally. Today, with ISO 9000, there is an international standard to help make sense of all the complexity in the world and to identify the companies considered qualified by a third party and those that are not. All our companies must be encouraged to come up to the ISO standard.
Even more serious, not only do we see no government interest or concern for these small things, which could really turn the situation around for small and medium-sized businesses if the government cared. Not only do we not sense any willingness on the part of the government, but we are moving backwards in areas such as military conversion programs, about which the government was very eloquent in its red book and made a lot of commitments. However, not a word about conversion was said by the minister, in the Throne Speech or in the budget speech, even though there are areas, in Quebec for example, where the military industry is very important. We will address the issue of the military industry tomorrow. The military industry must be revamped everywhere in the West, because of the evolution of the geo-political situation. As everyone knows, the Cold War is over, at least in the form we have known it until now.
We must make some adjustments to help industries move from military to civilian production, but there is no co-operation in this area. The government does not seem to be really concerned, since all it did was skim over the issue in some of its speeches. However, we have companies in Quebec, like Oerlikon and Paramax, which are in trouble. They have lashed out against the government. They cried for help again fifteen days ago. Help us, because if you do not and we do not get any more military contracts, thousands and thousands of jobs will be lost. Only in Quebec, the military industry has already lost 11,000 jobs in the last five years. These were high tech, high paid, and high-knowledge jobs. That is not the kind of jobs we can afford to lose in Canada and in Quebec, where the economy is already staggering, as we all know.
The situation with MIL Davie is also very important for the Quebec City area. If I am not mistaken, it is the largest company in the Quebec City area and it depends on government contracts. It needs the help of the federal government through a project that would meet a need, and I am talking here about the Magdalen Islands ferry. There is also another project, the smart ship project, which is important for the future of Quebec and Canada. Among other things, this multifunctional ship will be used to help settle regional conflicts as well as for UN peacekeeping missions. These projects should be a priority, but the government does not seem to have the political will to move on them.
This is an issue, and not only the Bloc Quebecois says it, since the Quebec Minister of Industry, Commerce and Technology, although he may be a Liberal and a federalist, has recently denounced the Liberal government by saying: "You see, you even wrote it in the red book". I heard it with my own ears on the radio. He was alluding to some form of political will by saying that it was nice to have written it, but what was behind the text? Where is the political will? We have not heard anything about that since.
It is not crying wolf to talk about this issue and to repeat that, if we do not do anything, we should be aware that we might have another brain drain, as we did in the late 1950s. Meanwhile, the Americans are developing their economy, they are here, they are everywhere, they are the giants and, as with the Avro Arrow in the late 1950s, they will come and get the best people from Canada and Quebec to develop their economy.
Another issue where we are going backwards is the fight against unemployment and the so-called job creation. Drawing from the red book, the government implemented the infrastructure program, indeed, $6 million in Canadian investments, including $2 million from the federal government. This program is supposed to be the main action and, so far, is the only one coming from this government to fight unemployment. The number of unemployed stands at 1.6 million, and this program will create 45,000 jobs. We must suspect that a very good number of these infrastructure jobs are seasonal, temporary jobs such as repairing sewers, roads and bridges. This will create many temporary jobs; of the 45,000 jobs created they say that 15,000 will go to Quebec.
They have nothing more to say and quite the contrary they brag about it. Weeks and months are passing by and this is all they have been able to find. They see this as a panacea and they think that this will solve the problem of 1.6 million unemployed. It is a shame to have so little imagination, to lack that much of the courage required to find another solution. I find this outrageous.
If there were a political will, there is an initiative that could go ahead readily, whatever the Prime Minister thinks of it, and that initiative is the high speed train. The project, which would link Quebec City, Trois-Rivières, and Windsor, could go ahead immediately but the government went wrong in that case. During the election campaign, the Bloc Quebecois supported the cancellation of the helicopters contract and everyone agreed to that. There was nevertheless something implied in what the leader of the Bloc Quebecois, the member for Lac Saint-Jean, said. It was that we should take the necessary steps in order that the expertise and all the budgets allocated to the helicopters be used for immediate and imminent development of the high-speed train. The government retained a part of the suggestion, since it cancelled the helicopters contract but as a result, thousands of workers lost their jobs.
I do not think this is the way to go to ensure economic development. We should note, and this is not coming from us but from the president of VIA Rail who said last week, and he should know what he is talking about, that the HST would create 127,000 jobs over a period of 10 years. Furthermore, according to the scenario favoured by the president of VIA Rail, this would
require absolutely no additional funds from the federal government.
That project would have many technological spin-offs and create jobs of all types, high technology or more simple ones, in all regions of Ontario and Quebec. Its impacts would be highly beneficial, mainly, as you have guessed I am sure, in the St. Maurice Valley, if first, it is implemented, second, the line is built on the north shore and third, the HST stops in my riding, in the regional capital of Trois-Rivières.
The third issue, and this one is dramatic because we can even talk about negligence in this case, concerns pharmaceutical products; the influence of lobbies is felt everywhere, most of all the lobby of Ontario members and ministers from the Toronto area.
There are two types of drug manufacturers, those who create new drugs and do research and development, and generic drug manufacturers, who copy existing drugs. Most of the first ones are located in Quebec where they do research and development.
Last Monday, I met a representative of the Canadian Drug Manufacturers Association. You need to know that it takes from 10 to 12 years to develop a new drug, before it is certified, licensed, tested and what not. I am told that it costs an average of $360 million to develop a new drug.
That industry is concentrated in Quebec. Bill C-91 was passed under the former government with the support of the Bloc Quebecois and over the opposition of the Liberal Party of Canada, although that party was divided over the issue. I could come back to that later. That bill extended to 20 years patent protection for drugs developed by those innovative companies. New drugs cannot be copied.
The proposal before us would provide for an immediate review of Bill C-91 even though the bill itself specifies such a review will not take place before 1997. And this, again, much to the dismay of the Quebec Minister of Industry, Commerce and Technology, being the federalist and Liberal that he is, who was reported in Le Devoir on April 28, 1994, as saying: ``The federal government's decision to review the legislation protecting drug patents for 20 years is creating uncertainty and its indecisiveness is scaring away potential investors in the strategic sector of pharmaceuticals. A $50 million investment was to be announced last week but was postponed owing to the federal government's indecisiveness''.
The Quebec manufacturers' association strongly opposed any attempt by the federal government to review this act.
Finally, I will quote from La Presse , which is hardly sovereigntist and neither is its editor, Mr. Alain Dubuc, who wrote in an editorial comment yesterday: The research investments matter is neither a joke nor a multinational piece of cake. The Trudeau era policy''-this should ring a bell for the members opposite-of eliminating patents was a disaster. Canada's pharmaceutical industry literally dies away, with research funding dropping to 3 per cent of sales, as compared to approximately 14 per cent in the United States, France and Germany. Bill C-22, which repaired the blunder, was a success; from 1987 to 1991, companies invested nearly $1 million, half of which in Quebec-
