Mr. Speaker, the dictionary defines competition as a rivalry between two or more businesses striving for the same customer or market. Accordingly if the Royal Canadian Mint carries through on its threat to borrow $30 million on the taxpayers' good credit rating and begins its risky venture into the coin blank market, it will become a competitor of Westaim Corporation from Alberta.
Westaim is a successful Canadian business with 110 employees in its coin plating division. For 35 years it has supplied coin blanks to the Canadian mint as well as to mints in countries around the world. However, in keeping with the government slogan that no good deed goes unpunished, the Liberals have decided to put this company out of business and its employees out of work.
This is not the first time the Liberals have interfered in a successful Canadian industry. In the 1970s the Liberal government of the day moved into the oil industry by purchasing Petrofina and setting up an intrusive national energy program. That brilliant scheme cost jobs, damaged the oil industry and wasted millions of precious taxpayers' dollars.
Why can this government not butt out and let the private sector take care of itself? Small and medium size businesses are the backbone of our Canadian economy. Throwing away money may be something this government has perfected, but putting companies out of business is going a little too far.
Experts from the South African and Birmingham mints have estimated that there is currently a 30% to 40% oversupply in the world coin blank market. They have predicted a reduction in demand in the near future.
Canadians are using cash and coins less and less. Why? Increasingly we are all using our bank cards, credit cards and in the very near future we will begin using electronic cash cards.
I would not want the government to be getting into the coin blank business now any more than I would have wanted it to get into the horse drawn buggy business in the 1900s. This venture would put the government into a start-up business in a sunset industry when there is already a saturated market.
Only two outcomes are possible, neither of which are desirable. Either the mint will bury Westaim and put its 110 workers on the unemployment lines, or the mint's new business will go down in flames and taxpayers will be on the hook for a minimum of $30 million.
Six months ago the mint started construction on its new coin plating plant, yet the minister does not have the authority of parliament to spend this money. Furthermore, the mint does not have the legal right to use the manufacturing process necessary to make coin blanks. Westaim owns the patent on this softening process and still has an unresolved lawsuit against the Royal Canadian Mint.
As a government owned crown corporation, the mint could have used the patent if it had bought a licence, but it did not. As a result, the mint cannot legally manufacture coin blanks with this process and it is tied up in a lawsuit that might scuttle the entire project.
In conclusion, I have two questions. How can the minister arrogantly risk taxpayers' dollars on a project that might never see the light of day? If this matter is before the courts, why is the minister allowing the construction of the coin plating plant to continue?