Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise for the second time. Changing the name of the Federal Business Development Bank is a substantial change indeed, especially when there has been no real expressed need. It would appear that the parliamentary secretary's memory of what happened in committee differs from mine.
I would invite you to read again the report on small and medium sized business financing, put out last year by the committee, especially recommendation 19, if my memory serves me well, which came out of left field since the committee had not debate whether the FBDB should change its name. It was our very courteous colleague from Broadview-Greenwood who, as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Industry, strong armed the committee into considering the results of the reflection which had taken place in the minister's office to the effect that the Federal Business Development Bank should change its name to the Small Business Bank of Canada. Strangely enough, there is no comment regarding this recommendation in the report. I believe that everybody understood that the parliamentary secretary had no other choice than to present certain proposals.
However, it was not enthusiastically received, since everybody agreed that the Federal Business Development Bank had a very good reputation and that changing its name to the Small Business Bank of Canada would result in extra costs and a waste of efforts, all the more as it apparently narrowed unduly the federal bank's mandate.
It would appear that cabinet continued to reflect on the issue. We are told that, during the past year, they consulted many Canadians, from coast to coast I suppose, and concluded that the Canadian public wanted the Federal Business Development Bank to change name. Whereas, last year, they had a very narrow view of the issue, now they have a wider view, and want to call the bank the Business Development Bank of Canada. The decision has already been made; that is what the bill proposes.
The name was too restrictive before, but now it is too presumptuous. I think that the development of a country like Canada does not rest on the name of a bank. This would mean that the only possible kind of development is a financial one when, in fact, there is also a social and cultural development in Canada.
This name change will bring about all the disadvantages we had anticipated right from the start, that is unnecessary spending, the costs of changing all business cards, letterheads and signs and a waste of energy. We also learned from the bank's representatives, during the proceedings of the committee, that in these times of economic recession and budget crisis, the bank has decided to move most of its branches, economic austerity notwithstanding.
So we ask where is the coherence in this government if it cuts seven billion dollars in transfers to provinces for social programs and allows spending of that nature which seems entirely unnecessary and untimely. We know just how capable of deep and logical thinking those people across the street, in the Langevin Building, are.
Unless the federal government sees in this Business Development Bank of Canada-and this is how we interpret the objective of the government-some special instrument for intervening in the post-referendum Canada which is coming, where the federal government, without any mandate and without consultation with anyone and especially not with provincial governments, is establishing-and we have said it many times and we hope Quebecers will understand what is involved, what is behind all this manoeuvring, truly the dark side of the moon-a whole system of instruments which will allow it to meddle more and more in the daily lives of Canadians and Quebecers. This is the new flexible federalism which, in fact, will turn provincial governments into regional governments.
What worries us is when we hear the testimony of well-known Liberals like Claude Castonguay and Jean-Claude Rivest, now a senator, and a former special adviser to Premier Bourassa, all articulate federalists. They declared publicly on the CBC that Canada is being fundamentally restructured. Quebecers should reflect on that, on what these people say.
So, when we see how far the federal government is going in terms of the new mandate of the Business Development Bank of Canada, which will be asked, among other things, to promote entrepreneurship and support all programs developing entrepreneurship in Canada, we notice that these terms are unclear and undefined in the bill and will allow the government to intervene as it sees fit in any area that it finds interesting, as it will be able to do in another context, under Bill C-88 concerning internal trade that we will also comment on later today. Again, in clause 9, the federal government is giving itself huge powers, without any mandate, without consulting the stakeholders, even if nobody asked for this. It is again doing it on the sly.
We are also aware that there was a meeting on this issue in Calgary; no one had authorized the federal government to act as it did and the federal government did not inform its partners of its intention to pass Bill C-88 that we are going to study later on today or tomorrow.
Instead we propose that clause 1 to maintain the status quo regarding the name of the Federal Business Development Bank be dropped, for all kinds of reasons. It is a corporation which has an excellent reputation and with which Canadians and Quebecers are familiar. It has proven itself, it has played a useful role as a bank of last resort and we will come back to this concept later on.
If only to set an example and because of the costs and unnecessary efforts involved in changing the name of the Federal Business Development Bank to Business Development Bank of Canada, which furthermore we find presumptuous, we
are going to vote against the government's amendments. We are going to propose instead to cancel clause 1 which aims at changing the name of the bank.