Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member from the New Democratic Party for bringing this private member's bill to our attention. He ought to be congratulated for taking the side of the workers. His bill seeks to increase the amount of money payable to employees as a result of a bankruptcy.
I would like to register two additional important points. First, whenever a bankruptcy occurs everybody loses. I am sure the hon. member recognizes that only too well. A bankruptcy situation is not something anybody looks forward to or wishes to pursue, but it is something that happens. Nobody likes it and everybody gets hurt. It is a question of distributing the hurt that takes place among the people involved.
The order that exists in the Bankruptcy Act puts the employee at the bottom of the list. The assumption on the part of the hon. member who presented the bill seems to be that by having employees last on the list this somehow puts them in a position of suffering more than all the others. I do not think that is necessarily the case. When an honest trustee brings a situation like this to a head, the hurt experienced by various creditors, suppliers and other people is distributed among them.
I was directly involved in some cases where the trustee decided to make a settlement of 50% of the debt that was owed. The assets were divided and the employees were paid. Roughly everybody suffered at the same rate. That is a reasonable point to make.
The second point I would like to register is that we want to encourage entrepreneurship. When we encourage entrepreneurship, we also encourage risk taking. People employed by new innovative industries know they are in a risk situation. People lending money to these industries also know that. The person putting the capital forward is also in a risk situation. My hon. colleague opposite says the employees build up the business. Of course they do. However it is also true that a risk is borne by everyone from the employees to the person who provided the capital.
Let us keep this issue in perspective and balance it out. I am sure the hon. member from Winnipeg knows very well that is really what he had in mind.