Mr. Speaker, it is an honour for me to speak on Bill C-99, an act to amend the Small Business Loans Act.
Along with my colleague from London-Middlesex this morning, I extend my thoughts to those people who have travelled from our various communities today to the heartland of Quebec, to Montreal. Our thoughts are with these people. We all share the same common sentiment that we want to have Quebec remain a part of us and share the business climate we have in this country come Monday of next week.
As the member of Parliament for Huron-Bruce, representing a small yet mostly rural riding, I do not have large municipalities. I do not have large urban centres. The largest community in my constituency is the town of Goderich which has 8,000 people. In Goderich there are two main plants, which employ 900 people: Champion Road Machinery, a manufacturer of road graders and other roadbuilding equipment, and Sifto Salt Mines, which produces the third largest quantity of salt in North America.
As a rural constituency, the businesses we have are largely small in nature. Many of the businesses are agri-related. When I was elected to be the member of Parliament for Huron-Bruce, I believed, as do all members of the House, that we were elected to create a climate of employment in Canada. We spoke about jobs and growth. This bill goes a long way in helping us to achieve those goals.
How do we create jobs? Government cannot by itself create jobs. Government jobs are largely jobs that do not contribute to the GDP of our country. While government cannot create jobs, government can certainly create an environment in which business can grow and prosper. The importance of Bill C-99 is that it becomes another avenue for small business to access capital and operating moneys.
As I said earlier, I represent a small rural constituency. We have many resources in our riding. Most of them are rural agricultural resources: wheat, hogs, beef and all the other commodities we grow so well in Huron-Bruce. The riding produces more dollar value in agricultural products than any riding east of Winnipeg. I therefore speak with a great deal of pride as I speak about my riding this morning.
The greatest resources in any riding are the youth of our communities. When we closely examine the resource of youth we find that many of these young people upon completion of their secondary education move on to other communities. For the most part they leave to further their education and then go on to careers often in large urban centres simply because job opportunities are not as plentiful today as perhaps they were a decade ago, certainly not in small communities.
Some of these youth are now returning to their communities of origin simply because jobs in the urban centres are not as plentiful as they once were. The young people are returning to their communities, in some cases to enter into a partnership with a family business or to enter into a partnership with an established business. In some cases they are coming home to seek the future they have dreamed of, a career of choice based on and related to the training and educational background they have achieved.
This is where the banks and the lending institutions become involved. Allow me to give a personal example. About eight years ago our two sons had a dream. Upon completing their secondary education they wanted to pursue a business career. One of the first things they had to do was find the capital required to begin a business. That was the first experience. Of course they had to visit the bankers. They found that the bankers were not all in agreement with their dream. In many cases they were turned away. However, there was one banker who, because of his appreciation for young people, sensed that there might be merit in the dream and that it might go somewhere. He invited them in. He asked their father to sign a few papers and these two young men began a business.
It has been eight years since they began the business. They have realized their dream. The dream will continue. It was only six months after they had begun the business that they asked the banker to remove their father's name from the papers. People are realizing their dreams in the country. This is an example of what can happen when we take those dreams to the ultimate end. Now that they have established their business it is the bankers who are knocking on their door to see if they can lend them a bit of money.
My point is that the risk in doing anything is always great but I believe we have to take some of these risks. When I chose this position in Parliament I accepted a risk. I was walking away from a
business that had given me 21 years of fruitful employment. My background in small business and in the agricultural sector gave me an appreciation for and insight into the borrowing needs of small business.
Early in my new career as a member of Parliament I quickly became aware of the inability of entrepreneurs to gain access to business capital. If there has been one area of frustration in my career as a politician it has been that of my being unable to resolve the matter of banks and small business.
A few months ago Bluewater Fibre Inc., with 150 employees in the northern part of my riding, found itself in the very untenable position of risking closure of its plant if a resolution of a border tax was not found. To the credit of the Minister of Finance's department, this issue was resolved and the jobs of 150 people were ensured.
Another situation concerns Tackle Windpower, a manufacturer of rotor blades for windpower electricity generation, which just recently began manufacturing in Huron Park in the southern part of my riding. Before this company turned one employee hour in its plant it had $9.5 million in guaranteed orders for a product it was about to build, but it had difficulty in obtaining a $500,000 operating loan. Through much difficulty and a great deal of effort on the company's part and a small effort on my part, financing was finally procured. This company started with two, three, four employees, and has now reached 28 employees and is quickly moving to full employment of 70.
Stories like this go on and on. How many members here would have believed that so much of our time would be spent on helping small business achieve funding and financing?
There are two million small businesses in Canada, and 82 per cent of new jobs created are created by small businesses. When one puts these numbers in perspective it puts a new importance on entrepreneurialism. If every small business would employ just one more person we would eliminate unemployment.
This is an important bill for two reasons: the increase in the maximum size of the loan to more accurately reflect the realities of doing business, and the movement of the SBLA to full cost recovery, a measure in keeping with our promises as a government to maintain fiscal management policies.
Given the extensive consultations with the major stakeholders, it is imperative that we seek swift passage of this bill for the benefit of all small businesses in Canada. I look forward to supporting this bill at a future time in the House.