Madam Chair, as I am sure the minister knows, a lot of those commercial arrangements that the banks have with medium to large producers have lending covenants on them. In certain situations, these companies will become insolvent, because the product they are selling is selling at a negative price. In fact, right now, if grocery stores were open, I could purchase a pallet of bottled water, and a barrel of oil would be cheaper. A barrel of oil is free right now, essentially, and refineries all over North America do not want it.
I am concerned about those lending covenants, because BDC and EDC are taking too much time to get out what the minister called a large volume of cash, billions of dollars, because of these criteria and eligibility rules. By the time they get around to obtaining the loan, many of these companies will have banks move in on them, claim that lending covenant against them and start making business decisions for those companies in western Canada.
Will the minister commit to ensuring that this does not happen and that those chartered banks are kept aside so that the people who own the businesses and have been running them can continue to do so until they can get more liquidity?