Mr. Speaker, I hear the comment that any business can stay open if it does not pay wages. We have laws that require businesses to pay wages. We have laws that require them to pay their source deductions to the government. There are times, for reasons that are out of the control of the organization, that the money is not there. They may have accounts receivable that they cannot collect.
I think of a well run small business that I knew of a number of years ago in my constituency. It had one of their major accounts receivable companies disappear overnight. It went bust, bankrupt. The small business was left with no cash coming in and no wages to pay out.
Through that difficult time the bank carried the small business. The bank saw that the management was good and had faith in the owner and carried him through. The bank was able to lend money to pay for the wages because the bank thought there was some capacity of maintaining the business.
In the situation being proposed by this member, the bank would never have lent money under these circumstances. Therefore the business would have failed. I cannot understand why the NDP finds it more important to stand on this principle of every last penny of wages having to be paid while other creditors, even if they are secured creditors, are without recourse to their security. Putting this up as number one on the list of order of creditors being paid when a company goes bankrupt means that secured creditors may lose the value of their security.
The banks take a mortgage on a piece of property. That mortgage may not be as valuable as it was because the cash has to be used to pay the wages. Surely the fundamental thing is to protect the jobs of Canadians. The fundamental thing is to build a viable economy. There are times, unfortunately, when businesses go bankrupt through no fault of their own. I would expect that surely the NDP would be willing to put forth creative ideas to help these kinds of business protect the jobs of their employees.
This is not it. This is a preconceived concept that the business has run off with the cash and left the employees high and dry. I was an accountant before I got into the political game and I saw businesses fail where that failure had nothing to do with bad management. I gave one example where the large accounts receivable company went broke and the small business was left high and dry. The owner was left high and dry. The owner stood to lose every penny he had invested in the business and through no fault of his own.
Why do we always think that the businessman has taken advantage of the employee? The businessman has provided opportunities for employment for the employees for as long as he has been in business. It would not likely be his desire, assuming no criminal intent, to see his own assets disappear and his own business disappear. What would he do? He does not get unemployment insurance or anything like that.
Let us be practical. Let us look at opportunities to ensure that if businesses find themselves in difficult times we do not guarantee that they are going to fail. Let us provide the opportunity for them to get through the difficult times by ensuring that the banks do not say businesses are too high a risk so the bank is not going to deal with them. We must ensure that the banks do not say that the risk is so high they are going to charge an exorbitant rate of interest.
Let us work for the benefit of all Canadians. Let us not split this issue into employees who are at the mercy of an employer and employers who the NDP thinks are ripping off the employees. Let us work together. Bankruptcies are tough times for employers. I have seen it. I have counselled them. I know how difficult it is and this would not help the situation one bit.