Mr. Speaker, I will address a couple of examples the member mentioned. One is northern Ontario where we have a regional development fund called FEDNOR that is able to provide funding for small businesses.
One way to be creative is to combine the money from FEDNOR with the money available from the Business Development Bank of Canada. If FEDNOR is able to provide funding to cover contingencies, for example losses of 5 per cent, the Business Development Bank of Canada can lend with a higher risk profile. We are looking at taking approximately $500,000 from FEDNOR and levering that
through the Business Development Bank, or through a private financial institution, up to $20 million.
Government has the ability to use some creative tools in the way it finances and uses some of our programs. It is the same with the Small Business Loans Act that we are talking about in Bill C-99. It can work in conjunction with other credit facilities provided by private lenders. The term credit can be covered by the Small Business Loans Act and the bank or the private institution can come along and be happy to provide an operating credit. In a lot of cases we work in conjunction with various programs.