Mr. Speaker, the member for Calgary Southeast continues to espouse these simplistic solutions that the market does everything and that governments are not needed to intervene. He glibly states that he understands that companies may need some insurance and financing to deal with the export markets. How kind of him.
In fact, last year $45 billion in exports were done using trade financing services from EDC. The question is, could the private sector do this? The role of the EDC is to move in when the private sector will not move in and provide the kind of financing or insurance that is needed to compete in those markets. I will give an example.
In my riding of Etobicoke North there is a company that is now doing some major work in the United States. It was not able to get bonding in the Canadian markets because we do not have the diversity, the richness, the size, the breadth and the scope of the markets to step up to some of these challenges. It received performance bonding working with EDC and the Canadian Commercial Corporation. That company is growing in leaps and bounds. It now has a presence in the U.S. market and is growing from strength to strength. It was because of EDC and the Canadian Commercial Corporation that it was able to do the deal.
That is not to say that we should not be holding EDC accountable to its mandate and not to be crowding out the private sector. We are talking here at the margin. We are not talking about a vast generalization which the member opposite tries to portray, that EDC should just get out of the market completely and let the market do the business. If we look at the facts, the reality is that the market does not always respond in the way the member would dream that it could. These are called market failures. It is the role of government to move in when the market is not there.
EDC and the Canadian Commercial Corporation serve this country very well. They perform an outstanding service. I for one would like to support them. I will be supporting the bill. I would encourage the member for Calgary Southeast to get off his ideology and look at the facts because this crown corporation helps Canadian business and helps create jobs in Canada.