There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. The only difficulty is the contrast. Whenever the minister makes an announcement, and he has probably made about 40 or 50 announcements about these various partnership programs, he says it is repayable. Not a subsidy, not a grant, this is a loan or an equity position. It is very interesting that there is absolutely no reference to what the provisions of the contract are, what the partnership shall actually achieve and what schedule there will be of the repayment of the grant, subsidy or loan. If it is not to be repaid, if it is an equity position, what are the dividends that will be paid on the investment?
If the contract is a secret one, this does not prove anything. There is no accountability here. That is very serious.
The DIPP, the defence industry productivity program, went essentially to the defence industry. The son of the DIPP, the technology partnerships Canada program, is going to exactly the same people. The first $150 million of that was to carry over and pay for some of the programs that have not been taken care of under the DIPP.
If this is what is going to happen, then we will have a DIPP and a TPC program which have not been paid for. I think we have to say that the DIPP has become tipsy.
I think we have to be very serious about exactly what is going on here. Where is the truth in what is happening here?
We need to become serious about cutting our taxes so that the people can spend money where they want to spend it and spend it wisely. The only way we can find that out is to ask the people where they think a surplus should be spent once we have a balanced budget and there is extra money in the treasury. They will tell us far better than a bureaucrat or we sitting in this House. Let the people speak and we will all be better off.