Madam Speaker, there are a number of principles I would like to adhere to when rising to debate on this first group of motions having to do with changing the name of the Federal Business Development Bank. A number of the principles I want to centre on are fiscal responsibility, democratic decision making, and some of the provisions in the bill itself.
My hon. colleague from the Bloc has illustrated so clearly and so well the additional cost that will be incurred because of these kinds of changes that I do not think are necessary. If on the one hand it would change the function of the bank by changing the name, then let us do it but it does not.
In the whole function of the bank the mandate has been expanded and the capitalization structure has changed. The capital that is available to be lent out has changed. In fact the current capital is about $3.2 billion and under the new provisions of this bill it rises to $18 billion. There are some points there that this bank now becomes a very major player in small business lending.
The parliamentary secretary made a big point about the fact that this is going to be the small business bank and that we all have an emotional attachment to small business. My attachment to small business is not on an emotional basis. My attachment to small business is very pragmatic and very hard headed. It is very simply that 85 per cent of the new jobs created in Canada are created by small business. That is the significant part. If we ever want to really build this economy, we have to pay attention to small business. We have to grow it and we have to develop it. It has to become larger and eventually has to graduate from a small business to a big business.
Those are all very desirable things. The big point here is that we are entering into a request to change the name of a bank. I really wonder what the result will be of changing that name.
What bothers me on the democratic part of this thing is that we entered into an arrangement in this House where we could get the bill to committee before second reading, a bill that was supposed to be discussed in the House. What happened? It meant that all the members in the House were not able to contribute to the debate on the provisions of the proposed legislation in the House.
The bill went to the committee and the committee worked on it. It worked fast. All parliamentary standing committees should take a lesson from the way the industry committee works. It gets co-operation. It works well. There is a lot of disagreement and fighting back and forth but there is no recrimination and that is very significant. We recognize a good idea. It does not matter where it comes from and that is wonderful.
When the decisions of that kind from committee are presented to the minister and he turns right around and says he is sorry about that committee but he is on his way, it will be the Business Development Bank of Canada and he does not care what we think, that calls for real criticism and begs the questions of how important a committee is. What has happened to the procedure?
If everyone in the House agreed to name the bank the small business bank of Canada, would the minister have said sorry, Parliament of Canada, but the name will be the Business Development bank of Canada not the small business bank? The minister exercised that kind of authority in committee, which he would not dare do in the Parliament of Canada. There has been an abuse of the intent and the spirit of bringing this to committee before second reading.
I also want to come to grips with the word complementary which was touted. This new bank is now supposed to be complementary. We could not get the experts, legal or anything else, to define complementary clearly. It was ultimately brought into the bill in a new kind of way. I hope the parliamentary secretary, the minister and all of the department officials will be able to administer this act so it is complementary and not in direct competition with the existing field.
I do not think it is fiscally responsible to incur costs of making all of those changes from the Federal Business Development Bank to the Business Development Bank of Canada. It is unnecessary and will change nothing. If we are to do it that way let us not change it at all.
Democracy needs to prevail in the House. We ought to recognize how important it is the wishes of committees have meaning. I must recognize at the same time, although it is not part of these motions, that in the committee there were some significant amendments made and the minister accepted them. We need to recognize the minister went the other way around, which I think is an abuse of his privileges.