Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today to speak to Bill C-53. My colleagues mentioned some relevant points earlier as to why we are opposing the bill, especially my colleague from Calgary Southeast.
Members of the Bloc have been talking this morning about the survey they have done and the feedback they have received from small businesses. Those are the bases of their argument. I have been running a small business for the last 15 years and what I will say is based on experience.
Small businesses, as we have heard constantly, are facing financial crunches. Access to credit for them is very difficult. Bankers present an opposite view, that they are working very hard to give access to small businesses.
On one hand we have constituents complaining. On the other hand the financial institutions are saying that they are doing a great job. Something is not right. Let me tell the House why it is not. From my experience banks do not understand small businesses. That is the bottom line.
For the last 15 years I have been in business I was afraid to go to the banks to ask for money. This fact has been recognized, but we cannot stop entrepreneurial spirit. That is the strength of Canada.
What have they been doing? They have been using other means. Even the banking industry admits that they are accessing credit cards at high interest rates. They are accessing from their friends at high interest rates. Why? It is because banks have not fulfilled their needs, irrespective of what promises they have given.
As usual, the government that wants to say it is doing something comes up with a program for giving guarantees so that small businesses can access funds. The program has been there for the last 25 years. Why are small businesses still complaining that they cannot access credit despite the fact that the same legislation we are talking about has been in existence for the last 25 years? It makes us wonder. Obviously there is something wrong. My colleagues have already mentioned what is wrong. The high cost of doing business is killing small businesses.
In the last 15 years I have been a small businessman I identified two costs that have been rising. Profits have not been rising. Competition is coming, but two costs have been rising. One is anything to do with the government, the bureaucracy. That is one of the single highest costs that is rising: taxation, user fees and government paperwork.
The second is the cost of doing business with the banks. Banks have many means of raising their charges to small businesses. There are straightforward service charges. They come along and tell them the service charges, but there are costs associated with overdraft privileges and high costs associated when cheques bounce, which is not their fault in any event. This is a huge burden. The economic climate of high taxation, bureaucratic interference and paperwork is killing the spirit of entrepreneurship. As my colleague said, it hits directly at profits.
The government said that it would abolish GST and we are still waiting for it to do it. I know from experience that small businessmen are paying GST from their profits. It comes out of their profits. The government may want to say that the consumer is paying it. Yes, the consumer was paying it, but businesses had to reduce their profit margins in order to accommodate that.
In principle I feel the bill is a great bill. It is there to help small businesses. It sounds excellent. The government says “Here is the money. We will guarantee it and the banks will run it. You can access it”. As I mentioned, we keep hearing that small businesses are having problems and the government is doing the same thing again. We have a problem.
In his report the auditor general identified the problem. It is abuse by both borrowers and lenders. Lenders look at it as another way of making money without taking any risk. Who is at risk here? Small businessmen are already at risk when they apply for loans and the Canadian taxpayer is also part of it. There is a double risk. The banks are have absolutely zero risk.
When banks look at applications that come before them they ask why they should take any risk and they transfer it to the government program. They are fine; the chapter is closed. Once in a while they will take care of it. If they do not get it from the program they can get the money from the bank. That is a very simple statement. There is no initiative. There is no incentive for banks to work in co-operation with small businesses when taxpayers' money is at risk.
While the bill in principle may be right, it is not the way to go. The way to go is to create the environment, economic conditions for small businesses to succeed, and they can succeed without government intervention. Canadians have far more entrepreneurship and are far more willing. They do not need the government telling them what to do.
In talking to people outside this country time after time they make the point that they do not want to come to Canada to invest because our payroll taxes are very high. The business climate is not here. Instead of coming forward with band-aid solutions, the first priority is to work toward creating an economic climate in which small businesses can thrive, an economic climate where even the banks will understand that they have a role to play.
I appeal to the banks that will be running this program to take the interest of small business people into account. They have done a terrible job in the past. They should improve.