Walt Lastewka

[Tourism, March 27th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, as members know, the Canadian Tourism Commission, in partnership with the private sector, has been working hard on tourism. Unfortunately some countries in Asia have had difficulty but countries like Taiwan and Singapore have held steady despite the financial crisis.

In addition, there have been projects approved in British Columbia. The latest project I know of is the Anderson—Knowles agreement in the city of Prince Rupert to the tune of $250,000. There is a Canadian Tourism Commission project of $1.25 million over three years for promoting tourism in British Columbia.

[Millennium Bug, March 26th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member knows very well that a number of reports on the year 2000 problem have been submitted to the industry committee. She knows that the industry minister started the research program with Jean Monty as chair to alert people about the year 2000 problem.

The government has a program in place. This has been reported to the industry committee. The next report on the government's progress with respect to the year 2000 problem will be coming in September.

We really need everyone in the House to publicize the importance of the year 2000 problem to everyone in their—

[Division No. 118, March 25th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, as previously stated by the Minister of Industry, it is impossible to conclude that the changes to the patent drug regulations were rushed through. The review of these regulations goes back to February 1997, in keeping with the legislative requirement to review Bill C-91.

Over a six week period the industry committee examined all aspects of the Canada drug patent. I should mention that her party seldom attended these meetings. During this time the committee heard some 130 witnesses and received an additional 40 submissions, many of which raised issues surrounding the regulations.

Counsel from both the generic and brand name industries appeared before the committee to assess various proposals on how to deal with the regulations. The committee recommended revisiting the regulatory regime.

Discussions with stakeholders have continued since that time. As a result changes, were proposed to the regulations. These changes were pre-published on January 24, 1998 with a full 30 day consultation period, as is the normal practice.

The final regulations that were approved by this special committee of counsel, on March 11 and registered on March 12, should have come as no surprise to anyone. It was business as usual.

After five years of experience with the old regulations we knew there were problems with this scheme that needed to be addressed, such as unnecessary litigation that wasted court resources, an unworkable damages provision, evergreening of patents and difficulty in administering the patent lists.

The new regulations address these problems. The regime we have put in place is a balanced one, recognizing the importance of all sectors of this industry, the generic, the brand name and newly emerging biopharmaceutical companies. It is fully in keeping with the government's objectives of a fair, more efficient system with reduced litigation that provides effective patent protection while enabling generic drugs to enter the market immediately on patent expiry.

Canada has the most pro-generic pharmaceutical policy in the developed world. We are the only country that has both a regulatory—

[Petitions, March 25th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, it is my honour to present a petition to the House from my constituents in St. Catharines and from people in the Niagara area.

The petition states that Canadians are alarmed and deeply disturbed by further victimization of the families of Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy by reason of the use of the Bernardo video tapes.

The petitioners wish to draw to the attention of the House that section 486(1) of the Criminal Code of Canada mandates that all evidence presented at criminal trials be presented in open court and be fully available to the public and media.

The petitioners call upon Parliament to amend this law by creating a specific exemption to this open court rule to exclude evidence of child and coerced pornography.

[Small Business Loans Act, March 18th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I listened very carefully to the member opposite. I have one question to ask him.

The member emphasized how jobs are changing and how important it will be during the comprehensive study to understand who is creating jobs and what the future will be.

Would the member agree that passing this bill and then spending extra time on the comprehensive review taking into account the auditor general's report will be helpful to all of us in the House as we discuss this bill in committee and take our time to establish the new SBLA for the future?

[Small Business Loans Act, March 18th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity to speak at third reading of Bill C-21. This is an important piece of legislation because it extends the Small Business Loans Act program and its funding for one year.

As members will know, a comprehensive review of the small business loans program is being done. The legislation before us today allows the program to continue while this review takes place.

Let me begin by emphasizing for those who have failed to understand that Bill C-21 is not a spending measure because the small business loans program is not a spending program. It is a loan guarantee program.

The legislation extends the funding for the SBLA program by raising the aggregate lending ceiling under the SBLA by $1 billion, from $14 billion to $15 billion. The $15 billion figure contained in Bill C-21 does not mean that the government will be spending $15 billion. It means that the government will be standing behind loans to the small business community that have a total value of $15 billion.

Members across the way have objected to this increase in the loans ceiling. I caution them that should we fail to pass Bill C-21 we will place a severe handicap on the SBLA program, which serves Canada's small and medium size businesses well and provides much needed access to financing.

In considering the desirability of this increase in the lending limit, we should recall the way the program authority works under the SBLA. The act provides a total or aggregate authority for all SBLA loans made by participating financial institutions during a specified lending period. Repayments of loans have no effect on the ceiling. Neither do the defaults nor claims paid.

The present lending period covers the years 1993 to 1998. The total loans made to date now stand at more the $12.7 billion. They are expected to reach $13 billion by March 31, 1998. However current authority to register loans is capped at the $14 billion mark for this lending period. If the House of Commons extends the current lending period to March 31, 1999, as is proposed by Bill C-21, we can expect further demands on loans.

Based on our experience during 1997 and 1998 we expect financial institutions would make an additional $1.7 billion of loans under the act in the coming year. This would increase total lending under the SBLA to $14.7 billion and exceed the SBLA's present authority of $14 billion. Therefore, for lending to continue under the program during the entire extended lending period, an increase in the aggregate lending ceiling is required.

Given that loans are registered on an average three months after being made, at the time the $14 billion ceiling is reached several hundred loans may already have been made to small businesses that the SBLA would not be able to register without the increased lending ceiling. This would certainly lead lenders and borrowers to re-examine these loans.

Without the additional $1 billion of lending authority, a great many small businesses would not be able to count on the SBLA to support their loans. This may cause major disruptions to entrepreneurs and businesses across Canada. That is why Bill C-21 proposes to raise the lending ceiling to $15 billion.

Assuming we see the same rate of lending as last year, this would leave a modest cushion of $300 million between the estimated need and the total cap. This excess is quite small when we take the range of possible fluctuations into account.

I would like to address another key issue that has been debated at length. That is the issue of incrementality.

The question has been raised as to whether these loans are well targeted or would they have been made by the financial institutions even without the SBLA program. There is no doubt that some loans have been guaranteed which might have been made otherwise.

The SBLA provides an insurance program against default, not a spending program. Under it, private sector lending institutions assess businesses and make loans. The federal government then stands behind the defaulted loans by paying 85% of losses on SBLA registered loans.

Like many other insurance programs, the SBLA pools risk across thousands of users. This of course diminishes risk; however it does not eliminate it for SBLA lenders. The applicants to which the banks made loans under the SBLA are otherwise creditworthy but tend to be start up companies or firms with low capitalized assets.

As with insurance of any kind, there are likely to be some loans that actually do not need insurance. For the most part these are loans that are less likely to default and therefore they do not cost the taxpayer. In fact a certain percentage of non-incremental loans actually help make the program affordable and sustainable.

It is extremely relevant to point out that since the government took office we have taken steps to move the program toward cost recovery. Since 1995, firms that benefit from the SBLA must pay fees that are designed to recover the cost of loans claims. Therefore any business that uses the program even if it does not need the SBLA loss insurance is in effect sharing the risk of lending to small businesses which need the program.

Industry Canada will be tracking this issue closely to measure the effect of user fees on the incrementality of the program. In the meantime our comprehensive review will certainly be examining the matter in detail. The comments made by members opposite in this House I am sure will be brought up in the Standing Committee on Industry.

That brings me to a final point. This government has been proactive in working to constantly update and improve the small business loans program.

In addition to the move toward cost recovery, Industry Canada has taken significant administrative steps to improve the efficiency and productivity of the program, such as cutting claims audit times by two-thirds and thereby mitigating costs to taxpayers.

We intend to continue this work under the comprehensive review. The valuable ideas and suggestions of all members of the Standing Committee on Industry will be carefully considering the total review.

In summary I remind hon. members that the statistics indicate the program is working well. It is a good program with broad support among the business community.

In 1995-96 more than 30,000 firms used the SBLA to improve their businesses. They created an estimated 73,000 jobs according to the loan applicants themselves, the people who should know best.

I would also reiterate that Bill C-21 does not make further spending requests. The amended lending ceiling and the one year extension are necessary to continue the valuable loan guarantee program while the comprehensive review takes place.

As I have mentioned over and over, this comprehensive review will be done in an orderly fashion. Hopefully we can get it to the standing committee early this fall.

I do not believe that this House wants to leave our small business community in the lurch by cutting off this very useful and necessary means of access to financing.

For these reasons and for the benefit of Canada's small business community, I would ask all members to support this bill so that we can pass it in the House and forward it on to the Senate. Then we can get on to the comprehensive review as we have discussed over and over in this House.

[Competition Act, March 16th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for her remarks. It is a major piece of legislation. Many stakeholders and groups were involved in the preliminary work. The Competition Act and the changing world around us are part of what the committee will have consider in depth.

I have three pages of people who have provided input. Some of the provinces have participated and some have not. Some departments in the provinces have participated. I believe very strongly that the legislation before the House today, the Competition Act, will require an in-depth study by the Industry Canada committee. It is something that touches everybody in Canada in one way or another.

We will have to take our time as we go through the industry committee to make sure we have heard from Canadians from all provinces and territories to understand how lives will be affected and how lives will be protected at the same time.

Whether it is $4 billion or $5 billion made from telemarketing fraud, the numbers are very high. People have lost their complete life earnings as a result of telemarketing fraud people who do not care at all and want to get as much as they can. We as a committee have to make sure we have laws in place to stop it.

A Canada-US working group has spent a lot of time on it. There are a number of items in the Canada-US working group that both countries need to address. This legislation is trying to address our portion of it.

There are other areas that need to be looked at. As previous speakers said, there is a lot of work to be done to try to make the legislation we have reflect the changing world around us today.

[Competition Act, March 16th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, the member brings up some very good questions. He is basically talking about a code of conduct that we need to put in place and about how e-commerce is to operate around the world. More work needs to be done in that area. I do not have all the details that he would like at this time but I am sure those are the types of questions that will be referred to during the industry committee's deliberations. I am sure these deliberations will take some additional time because of the complexity of this type of legislation.

[Competition Act, March 16th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I want to first thank the hon. member on his remarks earlier. I know that his items will be considered within the industry committee and I am sure will have some discussion.

The hon. member brings up a very good point on e-commerce. This is still a developing area, an area on the global scene, and there is more and more discussion going on. I believe there will be a stage when we get more global understanding of what e-commerce is, how it is going to operate, how it is not going to operate and the basic rules of e-commerce which need to be established on the global scene. Those items will then have to be rolled into the Competition Act as we move forward.

There are other items in the Competition Act which will make it very important for us to consider, the telemarketing of today and the telemarketing of tomorrow, as the member opposite has brought forward through the e-commerce.

It is important that those items be considered in committee in order to detail how these things are going to happen in the future. I thank the member for his remarks. I know he is looking down the road at additional things in terms of how the world will change. That is the situation we find ourselves in with this Competition Act. We need to bring it up to date. It has been brought forward since 1986. We need to get the best information we can in relation to the Competition Act so we can prepare ourselves for the future.

[Competition Act, March 16th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, today the House is considering amendments to one of Canada's most important pieces of framework economic legislation, the Competition Act.

The Competition Act provides basic principles for the conduct of business in Canada. It is, therefore, vital to the functioning of our economy and in some way, directly or indirectly, touches the life of virtually every Canadian every day.

One of the major purposes of the act is to promote competition and efficiency in the Canadian marketplace. This, in turn, leads directly to innovation, a wide variety of consumer choices that are quality goods and services, competitive prices and greater international competitiveness.

The Competition Act was last revised in a significant way in 1986. Clearly, Canada's Competition Act must be kept up to date and remain suitable to economic reality in the 21st century. That is why we are considering the amendments that are before us today.

They are a carefully crafted series of measures that reflect the views of a very wide spectrum of stakeholders who expressed their opinions over the course of extensive consultations. The bill includes provisions that would create a strict liability criminal offence to deal with deceptive telemarketing.

It would allow the law enforcement officials in certain circumstances, and after the authorization by a judge, to intercept private communications without consent to fight deceptive telemarketing, as well as conspiracy and bid rigging.

It would provide for the quicker and more effective resolution of instances of misleading advertising and deceptive marketing practices and revise the law regarding regular price claims by retailers. It would improve the prenotification process for major transactions and the mergers review process.

In addition, it would revise and increase the flexibility of the prohibition order provision to make it a more effective tool for promoting compliance with the law.

Telemarketing predators put this entire industry at risk when they cheat Canadians out of sums of money that law enforcement officials estimate to be a minimum of $76 million in 1996.

These amendments will create a new criminal offence of deceptive telemarketing which will carry criminal penalties for those who break the law.

The new law will also require that telemarketers provide consumers with information on the purpose of the call, the product being promoted and any material, conditions or strings attached to such products. Amendments to the Competition Act will also address misleading advertising and deceptive marketing practices.

We are all aware that advertising is one of the most important and universal tools for business success. Fairness and truthfulness in advertising by all players is essential for a healthy, vigorous marketplace.

The approach of the current Competition Act is too cumbersome and inflexible. Moreover, experience has shown that criminal sanctions, the only remedy available in relation to these offences under the act now, do not always respond well to the problem. What is needed is a range of responses that can be applied to fit the nature and severity of the deceptive practices involved.

Better tools could stop misleading advertising quickly before there is an adverse reaction in the marketplace. More flexible tools would also have greater scope to foster business compliance and voluntary resolution of problems.

The bill retains criminal provisions for flagrant cases of deceptive marketing practices. It also introduces a range of civil remedies that can be applied promptly so the alleged misleading advertising does not continue while lengthy criminal prosecution winds its way through the courts.

The courts and the competition tribunal will be able to issue orders requiring parties to stop misleading advertising. Advertisers who fail to exercise due care may be required to publish information notices to alert the affected public of the nature of the deception.

These amendments will also facilitate voluntary measures to correct the deception that has occurred and provisions will allow such a resolution to become registered and enforceable as a court or competition tribunal order. The area of regular price claims is another where the present act needs updating.

The retail industry has changed dramatically in recent years. Comparative price advertising is more than ever a critical means by which retail competes. Moreover, consumer purchasing patterns are closely linked to sales advertising. Both consumers and retailers have commented that the current law does not reflect the current marketplace reality.

Provisions in the new bill will clarify a critical area of advertising law for business and provide clearer guidance for consumers about the meaning of price comparisons. Two straightforward tests will provide simple criteria for defining a genuine regular price. One test will be based on sales volume and the other pricing over time.

As a result of these and other changes to the Competition Act the changes before us take into account business realities, shifting consumer behaviour and attitudes and the marketplace developments that affect law enforcement.

I am confident that these are worthy of the support of all members of the House. The discussions that will be coming up in committee will be very interesting as we all have additional information that we can add to and improve on the legislation now before the House.