My friend is saying that we should do absolute nothing. The point is they are not the government but they say we should have a perfect world. Soon my friends in the Reform Party will say we do not have the perfect world but we should do away with pensions. In a perfect world we probably would not need pensions or a medicare system. We do not have a perfect world and that is why we have governments.
What does the legislation do? Is it new legislation? No, it is not. The legislation has been around for a long time. Some time ago somebody acknowledged the fact that a lot of creative small businesses, real entrepreneurs, people with good creative ideas could not get financing from traditional lending institutions.
The banks would not listen to them. The banks could not care less about a young person with a great idea. The banks or financial institutions could not care less about a new entrepreneur who arrives with creativity and energy but could not get financing because he did not have the capital to put up for security or because he was too creative. The government of the day had to come up with something.
It asked what it could do to encourage financial institutions to support people who create things, lead the way, are on the cutting edge and build the country. What could it do? The banks were not being helpful.
The government introduced the Small Business Loans Act. Basically the legislation said that if one had difficulty accessing financing from traditional lending institutions the government would provide support in terms of a guarantee. If the bank felt that a group in its judgment was too risky, we would share in the risk, society and the bankers or society and the lending institutions.
We have talked to small business representatives, individuals and the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. We have asked what they think about the program. They say their members like it. I recognize they only speak for 90,000 small business people.
A small business organization from Halifax to Inuvik to Victoria could not be found that would not say it liked the program. Most federal government programs are bogus when it comes to helping small business. I am prepared to say that most programs are fluff. Most programs sound good but do not work. There are two or three that work well and this is one of them. That is why I cannot understand my friends in the Reform Party saying they do not support it. It is a mystery how they can say that.
It is fair country. It is a free country. They can support what they want but it mystifies me. I ask the next Reform speaker to explain in some detail why they do not support it. I realize that they say if we had a perfect world we would not need it. We do not have a perfect world. We will probably not have a perfect world for another few weeks or months or years or decades.