Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present the ninth report of the Standing Committee on Industry entitled "Performance Benchmarks for Small Business Financing by Banks: A Progress Report".
I am particularly pleased to draw the attention of the House to the fact that this report is supported by members of all three political parties on the committee.
The report follows up on the committee's second report to the House "Taking Care of Small Business". It sets out a framework for banks to report their small business loan statistics to the industry committee on a quarterly basis. This data will allow the committee to track the performance of the banks in their relationship with small and medium size businesses and to select specific benchmarking issues for future investigations.
The committee will hold meetings with the banks to discuss this report and related matters during the week of November 6.