Mr. Speaker, yes, I definitely share that concern as well. The purpose of this fund is to have it during the ups and downs in the economy, which happened to be doing very well in recent years. However, all of a sudden we have this downturn that could cause a huge number of people having to apply to this fund. There certainly should be sufficient latitude in that fund to deal with those types of contingencies.
I went to the briefing on Bill C-50, the finance bill, and there were a couple more esoteric points I had related to this fund and also to the changes to the Bank of Canada financing. What I am worried about is taking the investment ability and distancing it into this agency from the Government of Canada.
We have had a crisis lately related to asset backed funds. If we take the investments at more arm's length from government, how do we know what these investments might be in? How do we have government control? We, of course, want safe investments and socially acceptable investments with these funds.
It is the same with the Bank of Canada. Some provisions in this bill, which I am not sure have been talked about in the debate at all, that would increase the latitude and the mechanisms the Bank of Canada has in investing the money that it happens to have at a particular time.
I do not have a problem with modernizing the investment procedures to fit modern instruments, et cetera, but in this time, when we have had some great crises, in fact we have had a committee hearing specifically on this crisis of failures in certain types of assets, I think we should give particular concern to watching the latitude or the distancing of government investments. We need to keep that very close at hand and ensure, as people always expect, these are safe investments. People do not expect the government to be making huge profits but they do expect it to be investing in things that will never lose their money.
I think those are two important items that, as these things are implemented in the future, we should keep very careful watch of. I know members of the various opposition parties will be watching these items.