Madam Speaker, in fact, if the Americans start having problems with their debts, obviously the credit ratings will be changed and capital will be more expensive. If capital is more expensive south of the border, capital will be more expensive north of the border.
That would have been exactly the right time to have a loan guarantee program in place for the forestry industry, if they had done that, for example. It would have been the right time to put a business start-up program in place. That was done in Quebec in the past, in the early 1990s, after a recession, when we said we were going to give entrepreneurs a boost and offer them government guarantees. In a very large majority of cases, everything was fine and they did not need them.
When there is a problem with capital not being available, it is time for the government to consider developing and implementing loan guarantee programs. That, coupled with entrepreneurial know-how, is how the economy will recover.