Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to the Bloc's Motion No. 1 and also to defend the interest of small business for the business people of Saanich—Gulf Islands and all of British Columbia.
I too will read the proposed motion:
The purpose of this Act is to increase the availability of financing of small businesses, which would not otherwise have access to financing.
Obviously they are at considerable risk.
I want to talk about the business climate in British Columbia. It is in an absolute crisis situation. No matter who I talk to, people are losing their homes and their jobs by the thousands every day in Prince George, Cranbrook, Duncan, Lumby, Terrace. Mills are shutting down. Every other day on the news we see another mill shutting down. Some have suggested we will lose another 10 by the end of the year. No matter who I talk to in these communities, they feel the largest single contributing factor for these job losses and their lives being devastated is government regulation.
Yes, there is provincial government regulation, but there is also federal. As these whole communities are being devastated, the small businesses are being driven out of business as well. That is what this government needs to focus on. It has to create an economic climate in this country and in British Columbia for these businesses to be competitive and to succeed. That is not happening.
This program is not helping small business. When I speak to the small business people in these communities, they tell me that they are overburdened by government regulation. Small business people in my community tell me they get government forms every other day in the mail. If it is not a GST report they have to fill out, it is a report from the Workers' Compensation Board for premiums, or a report for Canada pension plan premiums. The list goes on and on and on. It never ends.
These small businesses are absolutely burdened with bureaucracy. That is what we should be focusing on to help these small businesses.
As my colleagues have said, it is the responsibility of this government to create an economic climate so that small businesses can succeed. It should not be raising taxes 40 times over four or five years. It should not be raising payroll taxes.
Government members like to stand and say “We have reduced EI premiums more than the Conservatives did”, but they do not tell us that they doubled Canada pension plan premiums.
This is choking the small business community. What does the government do? It says “We will bring in $1.5 billion. We will be out there to champion the small business community. We will make this money available”. Government is not telling us that this is a huge liability for the taxpayer.
The purpose of this legislation is to help businesses which would not otherwise have access to financing.
If we ask anybody in the business community what that means they will tell us that these are high risk businesses which probably will not make it.
Why is that? There are probably some poor business plans that are not going to succeed, but a lot of them could if this government would tackle the real problem instead of just trying to put a band-aid on it, thinking it will go away. That real problem is reducing government bureaucracy and creating an investment climate for people to come in and take hold. That is not there.
I cannot emphasize this enough. I speak to small businesses in my community. They employ two or three people. They show me the government forms they receive. They have to hire a full time accountant just to look after their bookkeeping, to handle the government bureaucracy and all the different forms from all of the different departments.
They are not just getting them from the federal government, they are getting them from the provincial government. The list goes on.
It was ironic. I did a radio talk show in my riding. A representative of the federal Liberal riding association came in and said “Mr. Lunn is against small businesses. He does not support the Small Business Loans Act”.
What a pile of hogwash. They do not understand the problem. They think that if they throw money at it the problem will go away.
After spending a year in this House the one thing I have learned from this government is that it thinks that if it throws money at a problem it will go away by itself, without it having to attack the real source of the problem.
I would like to emphasize what is going on in British Columbia. It is in a crisis situation. If we go to any of the interior communities we will see people losing their livelihoods. They are losing their homes. Why is that? It is because governments, both federal and provincial, have created a climate through government bureaucracy and policies in which these companies cannot survive.
The spinoff, the rippling effect, the number of small businesses that are closing is staggering.
Let us take the example of the softwood lumber quota. The province of British Columbia has lost it through government regulations. It is struggling to export its product. It is forced into quotas by this government because of more bureaucracy, more government regulations, more paperwork.
Members opposite can shake their heads, but these are facts. I invite any member of the government to go out to British Columbia, go to the small communities and to talk to these people. Hear it from them. Look at the devastation that is happening out there and then come back here and say “We need more than just $1.5 billion to throw at people with business plans who otherwise could not get financing from anywhere else”.
We have to do something for these people. What we see is absolutely not acceptable.
I think it is a disgrace that I have to look at this legislation in the House and then go back to the people of British Columbia and say this is what the federal government is doing for you. They will say that I am their federal member. I shake my head because these people are so frustrated. What are they going to do? There are real problems out there. We need to start attacking the root of the problems.
I will repeat that the government's responsibility is to create an economic climate in which businesses can thrive, profit and provide employment without government subsidies and taxpayer liability. We are not doing that, although it is our role in this House to do so.