Mr. Speaker, I rise to once again pose a question I posed to the minister responsible for ACOA. I posed this question on December 8 and I do not believe I received a satisfactory answer. Therefore, I would like to raise it again.
When I do get the answer this time I would rather not go into the rhetoric of regional development grants. I would like to get
an answer to the question. With all due respect I am trying to determine whether or not this Liberal government can assess what is productive in regional development grants.
I want to read the question I raised: Does this minister know the difference between a grant and a loan that is not repaid at taxpayers' expense? The reason I asked this was that when the minister was in Atlantic Canada he suggested that ACOA was no longer going to give grants, it was going to be dealing in repayable loans.
In 1992-93 ACOA wrote off $50 million in loans. I guess what this government has to understand is that a loan that is written off is no different from a grant because the individual is really not accountable for the loans.
If ACOA is now exclusively involved in the loan business, the question I posed to the minister was relevant to the FBDB which is actually the arm that provides venture capital to business on loans.
I would like to pose the question again in a simpler way. If the government is taking grants away from ACOA and ACOA is now one of the institutions responsible for venture capital or repayable loans, why not close down ACOA and let the FBDB take its place? That would save some money on the operations of ACOA and still would provide venture capital to Atlantic Canadians.