Mr. Speaker, with reference to the comment made by the hon. member, I want to help clarify my earlier comment which arises from the fact that 30% to 40% of the loans that are actually approved under the Small Business Loans Act, as pointed out by the auditor general, would have been approved in the first place without the public guarantee under the small business loans act.
The point is that for the most part those sorts of loans are usually loans of the higher magnitude. They are not the average loans required by the small business sector.
I referenced this quote during my remarks earlier in the day. My point is that there should be a loan guarantee for small business, not a loan guarantee for banks.
Essentially the Small Business Loans Act has become a vehicle for actually reducing the risk of private institutions and not actually for fulfilling the original intent of the Small Business Loans Act.
The greatest concern we have today is that the original intent of the program was to provide access to capital to start-up ventures or small firms that would not otherwise have been granted a loan from a lender.
The relative size of a loan, which is becoming very commonplace, is large but the relative size of the loan was intended to be small so that borrowers could have handled a higher rate or fee in exchange for a loan that did not leverage their personal guarantee.