Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise and speak about this bill at third reading, in slightly peculiar circumstances. I would like to state right now that it is only in the interest of Quebecers that we are going along with the government today.
What we would have preferred was for the Federal Business Development Bank to continue as it was before, with a mandate to simply stimulate economic development. We do not want to fundamentally change the rules of the game and create a new small business bank in Canada, as this bill proposes.
There is a fallacy in its very title, because the title does not match its contents, the scope of the bill. The first thing, of course, is the name change: from the Federal Business Development Bank to the Business Development Bank of Canada. That is a little pretentious, a little too pretentious, presumptuous. This was not reflected anywhere in the committee's discussions and debates. In addition, changing the name will be a frivolous waste of time and money.
More serious still, it would change the Federal Business Development Bank's mandate which, up to now, was well appreciated by Quebecers. It would go from being the economic development bank that it was, the last resort bank for a specific clientele, for a very specific market, to a bank which offers complementary financing. We are fundamentally changing what defined it, what gave it its character as a last resort bank.
The bank's role will be changed. There will be changes in the culture of a bank whose primary mandate was to promote the creation and expansion of small business, the culture of economic development. The changes will be subtle, as the new Business Development Bank of Canada seeks financing from the private sector and-this is of major concern to the Bloc Quebecois-will have to be profit-oriented, considering the rates of interest it will have to pay private investors, who will now be invited to invest in the bank. This will bring about a thorough change in the philosophy of the Business Development Bank of Canada, a bank that in our opinion is set to become a commercial bank with a culture that will be more concerned about making profits than just breaking even, as was formerly the case.
Furthermore, and this is probably the most negative development from our point of view, this bill ushers in an unprecedented offensive by the federal government in the sector of regional development, a sector where Quebec has excellent resources and a reputation for its expertise. The federal government, without consulting with Quebec or the other provinces, has the gall to indicate in the bill that it will deal directly with provincial agencies, which are creatures of the provinces, including in Quebec, although Quebec has legislation that regulates relations between provincial agencies-creatures of the Government of Quebec-and the federal government. This is supposed to be done through the Government of Quebec, and now the federal
government comes barging in, tracking mud all over the floor as it were. We deplore this attitude and we condemn it.
Well, let us go on to something else. The bill is full of terms that can be interpreted in a number of ways because they are so vague that bank directors, and especially political leaders, can use them any way they like.
When they are referring to programs, when the qualifier entrepreneurship is used, no definition is given of an entrepreneurship program or indeed of entrepreneurship itself, which opens the door to every possible intrusion by the federal government in the area of regional development, which in Quebec, at least, is considered to be the prerogative and responsibility of the Government of Quebec.
Finally, we seem to be looking at one of the centrepieces of post-referendum Canada which is being put together here in Ottawa, in a very low-key way, and which will make Canada a centralized country, a unitary country, something Pierre Elliott Trudeau never quite managed to do, but now it is being done very subtly, without debate, without any speeches and without anyone being brave enough to come out and say so. It is being done little by little, and the concept that prevails throughout is that Quebec is a province like the others and that for these people, Quebec as a nation does not exist.
