Mr. Speaker, it is certainly an interesting private member's initiative on the part of my colleague, the member for Chicoutimi—Le Fjord. Any initiative that encourages and promotes further growth and investment in the regions is one I feel compelled to engage in, study, and give it my foremost attention.
I share many of the same concerns as my colleague. Certainly, I believe in the importance of the regions. That is where we grow our crops, harvest our fish, and mine our minerals. From the regions we make a great contribution the economy of this country and, indeed, to the overall fabric and mosaic of this great nation. Certainly, some regions are better prepared and are faring better than others, but sometimes initiatives have to be undertaken in order for all Canadians to have the opportunity to engage and share in the wealth of this great nation.
As I said, a great number of areas in the country are doing extremely well. In my area of the country, Cape Breton and eastern Nova Scotia, there has been a tremendous engagement in the Alberta tar sands. The phenomenon of the Alberta tar sands in Fort McMurray is a great resource that is being shared by all Canadians, which is evidenced by the number of people we are seeing go west to work.
I know that many employers in the west now are getting much better at accommodating eastern workers, workers from Quebec and other regions of this country. We see them now going out for six weeks and two weeks back home. The wealth is coming back to the communities and that is a positive thing.
There is a bit of a social void where people are out of the community and away from their families for an extended period of time and that certainly causes concern. They are not able to do volunteer work with the minor hockey associations and various other associations, but at least the income and benefits are coming back into the community. I see that as a positive thing. I do not see it as the answer for the regions. I share the opinion as well that there is a responsibility on the part of the federal government to do all in its power to allow the regions to continue to grow and prosper.
My constituency of Cape Breton—Canso has been a benefactor in recent years of some valuable investments within the community. My colleague identified several that had been undertaken within his constituency. My constituency has benefited from Enterprise Cape Breton Corporation. I recognize that there is no miracle plan, there is no magic cure in developing regions. It is a constant hard work, learn from experience type of initiative and that is how one grows the region.
There has been success and over the last 8 to 10 years the unemployment rate has dropped in my community from 25% to 12.5%. A significant portion of that is because some people have left the area, which is unfortunate, but still we have had growth in the job sector. We have made some good investments and had access to some tools.
The essence of this private member's bill is really giving the regions another tool in order to recruit and retain some of the young human resource. Any time we can add another tool to the kit to grow the regions, it is imperative that we do.
Nova Scotia has the payroll tax credit. That was a program that was set up by a past Liberal provincial government under the stewardship of former economic development minister Manning MacDonald. That has been a tool that the province of Nova Scotia has really made use of and any companies coming in that invest in that province have really identified that as a tool that has certainly paid benefit to them and has enticed them to come and invest in the province of Nova Scotia.
The past government was committed to regional economic development. We identified in budget 2005 over $800 million to be allocated to regional economic development from FedNor, ACOA, and other regional economic development agencies. Certainly, that was a testament to the belief the past government had in regional economic development.
Through Enterprise Cape Breton Corporation and ACOA we have been able to invest in infrastructure. There are a couple of communities like Inverness in my constituency where the federal government invested in access to water. A business in our community wanted to expand its capability to process crab. It was very noble. It had a business plan put forward, which meant the purchase of equipment and the investment in human capital, but it also involved access to an incredible supply of fresh water in order to process the crab. The company was not able to make that investment because its business plan was to invest in the equipment for the processing. As a federal agency, we were able to partner with the municipality and allow access to the fresh water. This enabled the business to go forward and create the additional jobs. That was a good partnership.
Preferred loans are another important aspect. We can sometimes access capital in the regions. I am sure anybody who lives in the region or has a business there will know that if a person wants to make an investment in a building in downtown Toronto or Mississauga, there will be no problem getting the banks to line up, but if a person is in a region of this country, it is very tough to get access to capital.
One of the great tools we have used is preferred loans. We can make an investment or a loan to a company, which comes in on the back end of a project. We loan the company money at a lower interest rate and there are a couple of years of holiday before the repayments have to be made. Let me state here that the repayment of these loans is of the same calibre as the repayment loans of the major banks, the major lending organizations. We have had that type because we have been able to stand with those business operators and work with them in the early days of their business.
The final one is targeted investment with which we have had great success. If we want to bring these young people my colleague talked about to the regions, they have to have the opportunities in the regions to which they come.
A lot of times a project may be so vast. We had a $24 million project in Glace Bay. The company that came in was very willing to roll up its sleeves and make an investment, but it could not carry the entire burden, and some investments had to be made in the structure. We made those key investments in the form of a forgivable loan and we created 1,200 jobs in downtown Glace Bay five years ago. Those people continue to earn wages, receive benefits and contribute to that community. It has been a great investment, and certainly the federal government got its money back twice over.
These tools all go together to increase activity in the regions, to impact on the economy of the regions, and this particular initiative may prove to have some merit. We are not willing to support it outright, but I think it deserves the opportunity to go before committee.
There are a couple of concerns we have. Employment related to a degree is one of the aspects of the bill and we would like to see the criteria on that fleshed out considerably more. With any regulation or program that goes forward, there is an opportunity for abuse, and we certainly do not want that to happen.
However, this particular bill deserves the opportunity to go before the committee. It should be studied. If the proper criteria could be placed in the bill, then we will certainly look at supporting it, but I think I can join with my Liberal caucus colleagues in supporting it going forward to committee.