Mr. Speaker, over the past seven years the Liberal government's technology partnerships program has doled out $947 million to the who's who of corporate welfare bums across Canada.
That is almost a billion dollars of hard earned taxpayers' money. Despite the assurances of successive ministers of industry less than $25 million, that is less than 3%, of those so-called loans have ever been paid back.
Why has Bombardier, an enormous multi-billion dollar company, not repaid the $87 million it received? Why has Ballard Power Systems not repaid the $30 million it received? Why has CAE Electronics not repaid the $32 million it received? And why were so many of these handouts given just before the 1997 election? Too many unanswered questions and not enough answers from dozens of corporate welfare bums for the handouts of public money.
It is time to stop these handouts and return the money to taxpayers in the form of tax reductions and smaller government.