The hon. member says I am distorting it. I would invite him to check Hansard when he gets home.
With respect to Group No. 3, the member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine stated that it is totally unacceptable that the level of government responsibility for defaulted loans should be decreased from 85% to 50%. Why should the taxpayers of this country be on the hook to support bad management decisions by the poor, impoverished, helpless chartered banks? Good heavens. These are small business loans. These are small loans, period. Do we have to carry the can for people who are talking about annual profits of $1 billion or $1.5 billion? It is absurd.
The eminent economist Walter Williams once made a statement about this sort of thing which I think should be engraved above the Speaker's chair so that everyone can read it. He said “If someone with a business venture of doubtful credibility came to me and asked me to loan him $50,000 to support the business, I would tell him to go play in traffic. But when this gentleman who needs the $50,000 to support a dubious business venture wants money, he does not come to me but to the government, which has the coercive power of the majesty of the law to say `You have to give this business some money. If it goes broke, that is your bad luck. But you have to give it to him because we the government say that we are going to force you to do it through your taxes. Mr. Walter Williams, if you do not pay your taxes, we will put you in jail”'.
By a very direct and easily chartered course we can see that by giving this huge degree of guaranteed support to what may be loans of rather dubious quality we are telling ordinary taxpaying Canadians that they are going support to the utmost these dubious business ventures. If they do not, the government will put them in jail. That is the simple, very easily traced path of what we are talking about.
I do not feel as strongly about the second amendment as I do about the first. The hon. member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine became very emotional about this. I would like to know what is wrong with performing audits without notice. Do we have to allow loans of dubious quality not to be audited through the lending institutions? What is going on? Taxpayer money is being put up to guarantee these loans. Surely we can have the privilege or the right to audit these things without notice. But the hon. member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine says no, that would be a terrible thing to do. She has not heard of accountability.