Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in debate today on Bill C-53 with respect to Motion No. 1 which was put forward by my hon. colleague from Mercier, that the purpose of this act is to increase the availability of financing of small businesses, which would not otherwise have access to financing.
Let me make it perfectly clear at the outset what my caucus colleagues have already said. The official opposition strongly supports small business, the principal job creator and generator of economic activity in this country. There is simply no doubt about that.
I suspect that probably a majority of the members of our caucus have had direct involvement in small business or are small business people and understand the kinds of challenges that small business people face. I think it is something members of all parties in this House share. We all understand that small and medium enterprises without a doubt over the past 20 some years have been by far the major creators of jobs, prosperity and incomes.
The question we must really ask ourselves is what is the most effective policy that the government can adopt to promote the growth of small business. There are really two basic approaches that can be taken.
The first approach is for the state to intervene and to take money away from people through taxation and in so doing to destroy their profit incentive, to destroy their efficiency and to destroy the potential creation of jobs in order to finance government support schemes like the Small Business Loans Act loan guarantees. That is one approach. It is an approach which the Liberal Party, the government opposite, generally supports.
The other approach is to say that government ought not to be in the business of picking winners and losers but that business people ought to be allowed to do business without extensive interference by government by means of taxation, regulation and legislation.
That is essentially the approach that we in the official opposition support. For that reason we oppose the amendment and the bill because they go in exactly the wrong direction.
What we need rather than sarcastic comments from colleagues opposite is a vigorous policy which will unleash the unrealized dynamism of small and medium Canadian entrepreneurs. There are hundreds of thousands of jobs waiting to be created in Canada today if only federal and other levels of government would get out of the way of people who are struggling to create employment through small business but are unable to because we face some of the highest tax rates in the developed world.
We face them in payroll taxes, in capital gains taxes, business taxes and property taxes. Canada has among the highest property tax rates as a percentage of our GDP in the entire OECD. We face them in income taxes. We face them in sales taxes.
Ask small business persons in the country and they will say they have become for all intents and purposes unpaid tax collectors for the government. They have to collect the GST. They have to fill out endless forms for the same GST which the government said it would abolish.
Give them tax relief so that small business persons realize benefits after having spent their entire lives risking capital, their life savings, pouring endless and incalculable value of sweat equity into their businesses. The government at the end of the day tells them that after all they have poured into the businesses, all the jobs created, all the risks taken it will take one third or more of the capital gains of small businesses through the pernicious, destructive, job killing capital gains tax.
If the government were really concerned about creating a growth environment for small business and job growth through small businesses it would stop playing around the margins with this kind of state intervention, this kind of $1.5 billion taxpayer liability through the small business loans guarantees. It would stop bureaucrats picking who are going to be winners and losers in the marketplace and it would let entrepreneurs be entrepreneurs, invest in their businesses and reap the rewards. Imagine that.
Let me utter a word which may be unparliamentary, profit. It is a good thing. I know my colleagues opposite think it is a dirty word. They do not like the words profit driven. That sounds like an American concept. We in Canada do not like profits. We like the bureaucrats absorbing those profits because members opposite think they know better how to spend those profits accumulated through taxes than do the small business people who pay them.
This is the choice we face in the bill and in all the fiscal decisions we make here. It is whether the bureaucrats and politicians know better how to pick and choose winners and losers among the hundreds of thousands of small businesses in the country or whether consumers and business people themselves know best how to create the conditions for growth.
We say unequivocally and unapologetically that we like the profit motive. It creates wealth, businesses and jobs, and we know that the kind of tax burden imposed by these tax happy, tax and spend Liberals is exactly what destroys the conditions for growth.
I would like to speak to many of the interest groups that represent small business and various associations that appeared before committee in support of Bill C-53. Let me be honest. It is a constituency I am very sympathetic toward. Many of them appear before committee and parliamentarians and say they want tax relief but they also want all these loans, grants, guarantees and diversification programs.
My message to those advocates of small business is for them to make a choice. Do they prefer tax relief as the principal policy for small business or government intervention?
After all my experience and after having spoken with thousands of small business people, I believe that ten times out of ten the majority of small entrepreneurs will say they prefer tax relief to government intervention, the kind contemplated in this bill. There is no doubt about it. We cannot have both.
The small business community and its institutional voices need to choose which direction they want to take. The only way parliament and the government will deliver the meaningful, creative and dynamic tax relief we need is if we get government spending under control. The place to start and the first element of government spending which should be reduced or eliminated is direct government support for business, whether it is through grants or loans or guarantees. Maybe it is radical but I believe that a dollar left in the hands of a small business person is several times more effective, efficient and productive than that dollar taken away, circulated through a costly bureaucracy and spent by a bunch of politicians.
We have to look at the experience in the country to see which basic policy option works. We need to look at the experience of my home province of Alberta where we have maintained the lowest tax rates, no sales tax, the lowest small business tax rates and the lowest income taxes. We have unbelievable economic growth there. Let us cast our eyes to some of the eastern provinces where there have been very high degrees of government intervention, subsidies, loans, grants and guarantees for businesses. What we see are stagnant growth rates and high levels of unemployment.
The economic record is there for all to see. That is why I call on all my colleagues to oppose this motion and this bill.