Mr. Speaker, I do want to thank my colleague from Brandon—Souris for support in moving this bill to committee as quickly as possible.
The one comment I wanted to make is to correct something my colleague from Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca made in response to the previous speaker. He was talking about the number of loans that might or might not have been made without the Small Business Loans Act. I believe the figure he referred to was 90% that would have been approved even without the act being in place.
All members of parliament received some documentation from the Minister of Industry on Bill C-53 entitled “Meeting the Changing Needs”. In that document there is an item about incrementality, in other words, measuring the extent to which loans made under the program would not have been made at all or would have been made under less favourable terms in the absence of the SBLA program.
I just want to quote from the document. “While incrementality is difficult to determine, studies have shown that under a broad interpretation, as many as 86% of loans guaranteed under the program since 1995 are incremental”. This means that either these loans would not have been made at all to the small businesses concerned, and that is 54% of firms, or they would have been made under less favourable terms, and that applies to 32% of firms applying.
I just wanted to have that on the record. Even recognizing it is difficult to draw firm conclusions about the subject of incrementality, the latest studies that the Department of Industry had undertaken on its behalf have shown that it is a very significant program in terms of making access to capital available to small businesses.