Mr. Speaker, we acknowledge that in the early days SBLA was intended to be a mechanism to provide encouragement for bankers to lend money to small businesses. In the same spirit, there is a new concern out there which the hon. member has described well. It may be an opportunity to encourage the banks to take advantage of the SBLA to provide necessary funding to these newly emerging group of entrepreneurs.
A mechanism is about to be put in place to track the lending of financial institutions and to see where the loans are going and to what extent the banks are responding to the new needs in society. It is a useful step.
It is time to look at new mechanisms and I will very briefly mention one. Some states in the United States had a vehicle called agri-bonds, that were somewhat like Canada Savings Bonds, to provide agricultural funding. These were set aside for agricultural use only. Farmers and ranchers were encouraged to invest in agri-bonds knowing that the money would go back to assist hard pressed farmers in their state. That is a bit of a generalization but it summarizes the point.
Troublesome areas, such as tourism related businesses, where it is difficult to find funding for new tourist related projects, should be identified. Could we not consider the development of a "toury" bond as opposed to an agri-bond? Investors would put their money into a toury bond, knowing that the money would go to help new Canadian hospitality related businesses to expand or be created. It would be a way to direct money to tourism, as opposed to the old favourite of much of the money, the RRSP, a certain percentage of which is being invested overseas or in other countries. I would like to see a little more channelling of some of these funds into troublesome areas such as tourist or hospitality related industries.
It is another idea on which my friend from Broadview-Greenwood could respond at some later time. The Canadian toury bond could be a take-off on the U.S. agri-bond.