Mr. Speaker, further to my question to the Minister of Industry, I do not think there is anything quite as important or quite as critical for us as a government than our support of small business.
It is absolutely essential that as a government nationally and as individual members of Parliament in our ridings we have a strategy to help the small business men and women who every day go out there and risk everything they have to create wealth and jobs in our ridings.
I see a strategy for small business consisting of three components: access to information, access to capital and a streamlining of regulations as we talked about with the minister during the question.
In terms of access to information, in my riding we have had the opportunity to host three economic development forums to give the business community the opportunity to explore new strategies, to see new opportunities and to pursue new initiatives.
We have had an opportunity to have two access to capital seminars where we have had a chance to talk with our business
community and our providers of financing and to explore ways they could have better access to capital.
I make a point to regularly communicate with my business constituents so that they know about the programs and initiatives we are undertaking as a government.
A number of initiatives in terms of access to capital, both nationally and locally, in ridings like Parry Sound-Muskoka have been undertaken. First of all, through work that I was able to do on the industry committee and on the access to capital task force, we worked with the Canadian chartered banks to introduce five tools to help individual business people obtain capital.
We have in rural Canada and particularly in Parry Sound-Muskoka the Community Futures Development Corporation. In my riding we have three branches of that corporation which are providing small businesses with loans up to $75,000.
The Business Development Bank also operates in my riding. The government has raised the lending limit for the bank from $3 billion to $15 billion. New tourism initiatives have just been added for the Business Development Bank. They have loaned millions of dollars to the small business men and women in the riding of Parry Sound-Muskoka.
We have also seen an increase in the small business loan limit, which went from $4 billion to $14 billion in the most recent budget.
Of course in northern Ontario, in the Parry Sound portion of my riding, FedNor, the regional development agency, has seen its budget increase to $60 million.
Finally, a third component of the strategy is streamlining regulations. The minister mentioned in the reply to the question that a 15 per cent decrease in regulations has taken place. The new hires program introduced by the government will provide a tax holiday on new hires for EI premiums. We have seen a move to quarterly remittances instead of monthly remittances. These are all attempts to streamline regulations.
I urge the Minister of Industry to continue the government's initiative to support small business both across Canada and in my riding of Parry Sound-Muskoka.