Mr. Speaker, I get little chance to talk about small business, which of course is the backbone of our country, and it is a privilege to do that.
It has been fascinating to watch the Ottawa idea about how to help small business. I think that people in Ottawa say that small business needs helps and their idea is to organize a government program for small business.
That is not what I think small business in this country requires. In fact, in my own community when I ask small business people what they need they say “The best thing for us would be to get government out of our way”. I agree with that.
I look for help for small business by getting government out of the way, by reducing red tape, by removing a lot of the barricades and barriers to their success.
I will use an example of exactly what I think happens to small business when government gets in the way. I am using a provincial example. It has little to do with the federal government, but it is an example close to my own home and one that I think illustrates very well the issue of government interference in the marketplace.
The Alberta government decided that primary resources were not sufficient, that we should branch out. That, on the surface, sounds very positive. In looking for secondary industry a fabulous idea came to the Alberta government.
The idea came from a fellow with a good intellect. He came up with a concept for smelting magnesium by a very high temperature electrical process. This was proven by a very, very small experimental process in a laboratory. It never had any large scale testing, but he convinced government officials that this was an extremely useful thing for Alberta.
Alberta had cheap electricity. We had good railroad access to a community close to my home of Okotoks. There was magnesium ore not so far away. This would be an absolutely perfect way to advance the fact that Alberta needed a magnesium industry.
That magnesium, of course, was in use in the automotive industry for tire rims. It is a light metal, so it is useful for the automotive industry.
They built what I would charitably call an edifice, the MagCan plant, halfway between Okotoks and High River in a little community called Aldersyde, right on the railroad line.
Millions of dollars of taxpayer funds were spent on the MagCan plant. Charitably speaking, it was a white elephant. I suppose that if I stood inside the building it would be difficult in the MagCan plant to take a softball and toss it to the roof. That is how tall this building was. It was full of expensive equipment.
They brought magnesium ore all the way from British Columbia and piled it up. It was quite a sight, glistening in the sun. They brought in huge amounts of electricity, more electricity than is needed for a large city. There were huge transformers.
When it came time to put the ore in the smelting process and flip the switch, it fizzled. It flopped. Zip. Nothing. That MagCan plant stands today with pigeons flying around this beautiful edifice of taxpayer funds all because some distant bureaucrat decided that this kind of process had a good chance of success. It did not.
Had that individual gone for private resources, they would have said “Do you think that little experiment on the lab table is really going to generate the kind of magnesium that we require? Don't you think we should have a pilot project that might be big enough to fit into a garage? Don't you think maybe we should spend $30,000 proving this? Don't you think you should come up with $30,000 out of your own jeans?”
That is the way successful small business gets organized. This individual put up not a nickel, not a penny.
I had another person come to me in my riding not so long ago, a fellow who had a great idea. This idea was to put winglets on aircraft instead of de-icing fluid. It was a fabulous idea. De-icing fluid is toxic. These winglets would cover the wings. When the plane is ready to leave they take them off and there is no ice, no snow and no need for toxic chemicals.
He said to me “Doc, where do you think I should go for funding? Is there a government program?” I said “Is there what? You wouldn't dream of going to a government program with this. Taxpayers' money should not go into this. This is an investment opportunity. That is where you should go. I know three individuals”.
He went to those three individuals and they said to him “The tax system in this country is so tough that we have taken all of our speculative funds offshore”. Where did he get his money? Offshore, away from Canada, away from a fair taxation system which we do not have, away from the entrepreneurial spirit in Canada which we do not have. This is a sad story of a young man with a fabulous idea who had to leave this country. He lived here, he breathed here, he wanted to pay taxes here, but he had to leave.
I want to give another example of how Canadian small business is treated here. We are moving now into an area that is closer to home for me. We have spent a lot of time going through the natural health products area over the last while. My personal philosophy on this issue has been that the public should have access to natural health products if there is not proven harm, not proven side effects and not proven contamination. People who want to look after their health with preventive measures should be allowed to do that.
To my surprise, I found that the health protection branch, when it decides for sometimes very arbitrary reasons to stop making a product available in Canada—it cannot be marketed, sold, distributed by wholesale or retail and cannot be used—allows the Canadian consumer a three month personal supply by mail order or by going to another jurisdiction, in particular the United States. That is illogical to me. If a product is not safe, it should say no, ban it and not allow it into the country. If a product is safe, surely it would allow a Canadian retailer to market the product.
I have an example of a little pill called Stevia which has just been taken off the market in Canada. It is a herbal sweetener. It has nothing to do with anything toxic. People can pop it into their drinks to sweeten them. But it does compete with another sweetener. I suspect that might be the reason it would be taken off the market.
Government getting out of the way of small business and providing an environment for small business is what we expect. That is what we look for. That is what small business hopes for.
We do not need more government programs. We do not need individuals who will tell us to use taxpayers' money in a speculative manner. That is the last thing Canadians want. It is the last thing that small business wants. And it is the last thing that I will vote for.