Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise in the House of Commons as the New Democratic Party spokesperson for small business to debate the merits of Bill C-21 at second reading.
This bill as has been outlined increases the total loan pool offered by the Small Business Loans Act from $14 billion to $15 billion. This bill is before the House because the small business loans program is set to expire in about six weeks, on March 31, 1998.
In existence since 1961 the SBLA is a small business loans guarantee program which increases the availability of loans for establishing, expanding, modernizing or improving small business enterprises. We believe that this bill is necessary in the greater picture because the review of the entire SBLA is necessary considering what has come out of the auditor general's report.
The SBLA provides another alternative source of funding for businesses in this country. It is a program which many people in the Reform Party do not understand and actually which I do not think anybody in the Reform Party understands.
The SBLA is a leveraging program. It leverages billions of dollars out of other sources for business people to invest in their businesses. It is only one small component of the financing requirements of the business community. It is a very unique and very important because of the leveraging factor.
If Reform members had any business experience they would know that leveraging in business is extremely important when accessing capital either to establish a business or to increase manufacturing capacity or to improve and modernize as the case may be.
The NDP has supported the Small Business Loans Act program in the past. Although we believe it is unfortunate that Canadian banks need the incentive of a government guarantee to do their job and service their small business customers, we will continue to support the program with certain conditions and with certain improvements required.
The conditions are related to the auditor general's review of the SBLA and Industry Canada's handling of the SBLA. We are concerned about a number of the auditor general's findings in last December's report about abuses by some of the bankers that are registered lenders under the act and about the tendency of bankers and the industry department to inflate the program's job creation numbers.
As a result of that audit the government has brought forward Bill C-21 as an interim measure to extend the SBLA for one year while the industry department conducts a program review. We are informed as well that the standing committee on industry of parliament will be conducting as parallel review. My NDP colleagues and I intend to be active in that process when it shows up on the order paper of the House of Commons.
Before I get into the substance of the bill I want to mention a couple of points. Reform believes that there is one engine. The Liberals believe that there are two engines, but the NDP actually believes there are three engines of our economy.
The first and most important engine of our economy is the business community. Members of the business community risk the capital. They are the ones who have the ideas and bring their ideas to fruition by investing money in them, creating jobs and producing a product or a service which is needed or purchased in Canada and in other parts of the world.
This is a very important component of our economy. They truly are the entrepreneurs that show how people can create jobs. They are the people who risk their lives in terms of their finances almost on a daily basis. We feel this is a very important component of our economy. However this component would not work very well without the other two components, the other two engines of the economy.
The second engine of our economy is the co-op sector. An example of that is the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool or Federated Co-ops. Co-ops are very important, as is the credit union sector. There are caisses populaires in Quebec, parts of Ontario, British Columbia and Atlantic Canada. There are significant co-op and credit union sectors.
The reason co-ops are an important engine is that groups of people have come together to do things in their communities or regions that business would not do or that government could not do. That is where people underestimate how important the Canadian economy is in terms of its uniqueness.
We have business as one of the major engines of the economy. We have co-ops as another major engine. The third engine of our economy is the government sector.
The government sector is obviously not supported by Reformers. They want to see the elimination of police services in our communities. They want to see the elimination of fire protection. They want to see the degradation of education and health care. They want business to run the whole shebang.
Canadians see through their very transparent policy situation. They see the Reform Party as being the party that says “Government does not work. Vote for Reform and we will prove it”.