Werner Schmidt

[Government Contracts, June 4th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, this morning the Canadian Taxpayers Federation released a report that indicates very clearly that Bombardier was one of the worst welfare bums in Canada. It has received $1.2 billion in grants and subsidies over the last 15 years. The Prime Minister gives Bombardier a lot of untendered contracts, 110 untendered contracts. At least these followed the rules of providing public disclosure. So why did the Prime Minister not follow that rule when the government awarded the largest contract valued at $2.85 billion?

[Judges Act, June 3rd, 1998]

Madam Speaker, it is a privilege for me to enter the debate on this Bloc motion to delete from the proposed bill clause 5. I will be supporting this motion.

I want to address a couple of the points made by one of my Liberal colleagues opposite. She made the point that we want judicial independence so that it stands clear and will interpret and apply the law in the way that the legislators of this country both federal and provincial intended it to be enforced.

I could not agree more. I think we all agree on the independence of the judiciary. I think we want to commend those people. I think we want to recognize them for what they are. In order for them to do that and to have the kind of respect we want them to enjoy, they must be competent and able and must demonstrate solid judgment.

A lot of judges fit into that category. Not all of them do. But the important thing to recognize is that we want competence. We want to trust our judges. We want to depend on them. We want them to interpret the law as it ought to be interpreted. Where we have difficulty is when judges decide that what they think about the law is more important than what the House thinks the law is to be. We have difficulty when judges think they can write the law for Canadians, when they can reinterpret what the House of Commons said and when they can tell the House of Commons this is what we should be doing.

That is when the judges have stepped outside their independence. They have now taken over a position they had no business taking over. Let us never forget that a judge is a servant of the people to preserve the justice of the nation, to ensure the laws are applied fairly and with the intention and the spirit within which legislation was passed. Judges should not tamper with the sacred right of the people and the responsibility the people have given to them to represent their interests, to make sure the safety and the justice of the people are preserved. That is a point we must underline.

This raises the point of how a judge is appointed. The process of appointing a judge in Canada today leaves a lot to be desired. We want to appoint people who have demonstrated that they can be wise in their judgement, who have the courage to take on very difficult situations and ensure the principles of justice, fairness and righteousness apply in the administration of that justice. To do that means we have to step completely outside of patronage appointments. We must have a process that guarantees that. Unfortunately the process we have today does not guarantee this kind of independence. How can we expect to have an independent judiciary if the process itself is not one that guarantees or at least has the potential of bringing forward those people who are competent and who have demonstrated they can be trusted?

That bring us into the actual provision of this motion, the elimination of clause 5, which means to give to the judges a retroactive pay raise of 4.1% and another in the year following of 4.1%, a total of about 8.3% from the salary base from which they have come today.

My concern is not that judges are going to get a raise. They deserve to be adequately compensated. But it has to take place in the context of what else is happening in our society.

I draw attention to the context within which this proposal is being brought forward. My hon. colleague has just talked about the RCMP having received a pittance. Perhaps it is a pittance but it is what it is. Let me refresh our memories as to what it is. On March 27, 1998 RCMP officers secured a pay raise of 2% retroactive to January 1998. They received a second increment on April 1 of another 1% and an additional .75% in October 1998. That is not exactly a pittance but it does not even come close to what is being proposed for the judges.

Let us look at what the officers do for us. They are the ones who are at the front line, who are there to detect the criminal and try to find out who committed the crime and to do what is necessary to bring that criminal to justice. Those officers did not get the kind of raise they deserve. If they did, the judges should receive something similar.

More important is a totally different issue. The government has decided in Bill C-3 to deny the police officers who are to enforce the law one of the basic fundamental tools in order to detect who actually committed the crime, to make sure the identification is accurate. We are talking about DNA samples. They ought to be given that kind of authority, the tool that allows them to unequivocally determine who was at the scene of the crime. That is one area of the context, but there is another one.

Recently the Minister of Justice provided a fund of $32 million for crime prevention. It is a wonderful, noble idea to prevent crime. It is excellent. But what happened? Did any municipality, any province receive any additional fund so that it could apply and get the people out there to enforce the law? No. Should we prevent crime as much as possible? Yes we should, but we are not enforcing the law as well as we could and the police are not able to do their job simply because in many instances there are not enough of them.

Let me tell the House why there are not enough of them. Even if we could use all the RCMP officers for crime detection, that would be one thing, but the government in its wisdom passed Bill C-68 which establishes a firearm registration. Who has to administer the registration of all these firearms? The police.

Is that their primary function? Will that help them detect crime? Will that help them to make our society safer? Will that help them to bring to justice the people who have killed others, who have committed violent crimes?

It is not a small amount of money, $133.7 million per year estimated by the director of the new firearms registration unit. Where is the logic in all this? That is our context.

We can go one step further. We can go to the Young Offenders Act. We have been told for almost two years now there will be new legislation. What did we get? A proposal. Put that in context. It begins to look a little strange.

We have the RCMP officers getting a raise. We have civil servants getting a raise. We have other people in our private sector getting a raise. None of them are getting a raise anywhere close to what is being proposed for the judges.

These are the people we want to administer the law, to enforce the law, to pass judgment on criminals that is fair, just and righteous. Then we turn around and say they are in a special class and deserve more money than anyone else. If we really want to listen to the people, we should be doing things that are fair and equitable.

We have created a special class of people who deserve a raise over and above what anyone else is getting. I want to raise a point that has to do with the definition of spouse.

It is very interesting that this legislation says a surviving spouse in relation to a judge includes a person of the opposite sex who has co-habited with a judge in a conjugal relationship for at least one year immediately before the judge's death.

It is very interesting that this definition is different from the one that recently came out of the appeals court defining spouse. For judges a spouse is a partner of the opposite sex. It is interesting that we have that kind of definition here and we have another definition for the rest of Canadians.

What will happen now? Is an appeals court going to say this act is ultra vires or are we going to change the other legislation? It is fascinating that we have these kinds of things in legislation.

I propose to the government that it take this bill back, rethink the whole thing and figure out something that makes sense to Canadians.

[Petitions, June 1st, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to present two petitions dealing with the same subject.

The first petition has been signed by 615 petitioners who petition parliament to support the motion of the representative from Yorkton—Melville that in the opinion of the House the government should bring in legislation in accordance with provisions of the Referendum Act, 1992, which would require a binding national referendum to be held at the time of the next election to ask voters whether or not they are in favour of government funding of medically unnecessary abortions.

The second petition is on exactly the same subject, the same motion. It is signed by 125 petitioners who present it to parliament for its consideration.

[Competition Act, May 27th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, I rise with a lot of interest in this bill. I think the hon. member when he first started on his crusade with regard to gasoline prices undertook something that had an awful lot of appeal. What has happened in the process of the bill is quite different from where the hon. member started. We would have to look at this from the point of view that I personally and the Reform Party that I represent in the House clearly support vigorous and open competition in the marketplace. We encourage that and we want to make sure there is competitive pricing, competitive promotion and that we enforce competition law as it exists at the present time.

We also recognize there is a perception on the part of certain independent gas retailers that the competition that exists is not fair and that there is a lack of competition in some cases and the very same thing exists in the minds of some customers and consumers.

I would like to advance to the hon. member that his intention was great but Bill C-235 fails to resolve that issue. It stops short of looking at the real issue behind the lack of competition in the marketplace. The issue is not the Competition Act as has been proposed because the Competition Act lays out very clearly provisions preventing predatory pricing, abuse of dominant position or unfair practices.

It is necessary for us to know to what the Competition Act says. Section 78 in part (a) refers specifically to what anti-competition really means. It includes any of the following acts. Part (a) says it is squeezing by a vertically integrated supplier which is exactly what Bill C-235 addresses: “squeezing of the margin available to an unintegrated customer” which in the example is the independent gasoline retailer “who competes with a supplier for the purpose of impeding or preventing the customers entry into or expansion in a particular market”.

That is precisely the issue the hon. member is trying to address. He is suggesting the Competition Act does not cover this issue. I submit it does. Part (i) reads: “selling articles at a price lower than the acquisition cost for the purpose of disciplining or eliminating a competitor”.

It does not take a genius to figure out what that really means. The intention of the hon. member is certainly commendable but the current legislation provides for exactly the kind of thing he wants to prevent. I agree that we should not have that and that is why section 78 exists.

Under section 50 of the Competition Act we have very serious consequences for a company or individual engaging in anti-competitive behaviour. The hon. member in his initial comments made the observation that the Competition Act needs to be enforced and must be efficient in its application. I could not agree with him more.

If the issue is one of enforcement it seems that is exactly what it is. The current provisions under sections 50 and 78 have comprehensive enough coverage that they can deal with all the things the hon. member wants to deal with in Bill C-235. The issue becomes one of the willingness to enforce that legislation, to actually say if this is done then there is a consequence. Part of the reason for the perception that competition does not exist is the act is not being enforced.

The member suggested this has nothing to do with taxation. It has a lot to do with taxation.

Before I go into the taxation part I would like to suggest one other issue. That has to do with the most recent article that columnist Diane Francis wrote for the May 26 issue of the Financial Post . She suggests that one of the reasons Canada has some of the difficulties it has with regard to the Competition Act is in Canada there is not the kind of anti-trust legislation that exists in the United States. I agree with that.

I believe the time has come for us to examine very seriously whether we ought to be looking at the issue of whether industries and certain players in the marketplace are becoming too large. If we allow an oligopoly to develop where an industry becomes so big, a player in a particular sector becomes so big that it virtually dominates the marketplace and dictates the prices of services and product in that sector, we ought to look very seriously at whether that oligopoly ought to continue.

I alert the Minister of Finance in this connection when he considers later this year the proposed merger of the banks. It seems to me we ought to look at that as well.

I want to come back to the taxation issue. The hon. member told us very clearly that it has nothing to do with taxation. Let me suggest that the excise tax on gasoline can be blamed for higher prices at the pumps more effectively than anything else. I will cite some facts. More than 50% of the average price of gasoline at the pumps actually is excise tax. The residual effect is that the profit margin for suppliers and retailers is reduced. If we are looking for negative forces on the marketplace then we need look no further than on the effective of excessive taxes on industry, the business person and the consumer.

In the case of gasoline pricing and profit margins for both big and small players everyone is being hurt by excessive taxes. The only player who comes out unscathed in the entire process is the tax grabbing Liberal government.

That tax grabbing hurts the consumer by raising the prices at the pumps and by cutting into the profit margins of big and small business. That is the issue. The typical gasoline retailer realized an average gross profit margin of three and a half cents on the sale of a litre of regular gasoline in 1996. That amounts to 6% of the average pump price. The taxes meanwhile averaged 28.6 cents a litre more than 50% of the average pump price at that time. Both refiners and gasoline marketers have seen profit margins fall as a result of price competition despite rising crude oil prices since 1991.

There is a very practical issue here that we need to look at as well. Average consumers will ask how on long weekends and during vacation periods can prices go up.

Crude oil prices can rise and the lag between the rise in world prices and the price at the pump has a very short time span. But when the price drops on the world market it takes a long time before the price falls at the pumps. These are the issues we want to look at in a very serious way.

I commend what the hon. member is trying to do, but I submit that it is the wrong way to go at the issue. I encourage him first to suggest to his colleagues to reduce taxes and get the money back to the taxpayers so that they can afford to buy gasoline and that the margin for the businessman increases rather than decreases.

[Millennium Bug, May 14th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Secretary of State for Financial Institutions.

The year 2000 millennium bug is a potential time bomb for the Canadian economy. The chief economist for Deutsche Morgan Grenfell has indicated that a global recession is likely to result from the millennium bug to about a 60% probability.

I do not believe that either the Secretary of State for Financial Institutions or the Minister of Finance has a plan to protect the Canadian economy. If he does, will the Secretary of State for Financial Institutions or the Minister of Finance—

[Bank Act, May 13th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, I feel privileged to enter the debate on this bill. I think the motivation that gave rise to the bill is a very commendable one.

I believe at the beginning of the last parliament, the 35th Parliament, the industry committee undertook a major study on access to capital for small business. That study has continued to guide the hon. member who just spoke on behalf of the government side in this debate. It certainly influenced him and it influenced a lot of other people.

The issue here is the availability of credit to individuals and to businesses. We need to be very careful that this credit is available in a fair and equitable manner and in a competitive marketplace where the people who are providing the capital do so in a fair and reasonable manner.

The issue before us is that banks, chartered banks in particular, be forced. I know the hon. member who is presenting this bill said that there is no coercion involved. That word perhaps is false. There is coercion involved in this bill.

At the outset of the bill its summary clearly suggests rather directly that the banks shall. It says that this enactment amends the Bank Act and provides that certain branches of banks must take measures to facilitate access to credit to persons who have a residence or place of business in the federal electoral district in which the branches are located.

Throughout the clauses of the bill the words “shall” and “must” are located. The issue is very clear that there is definitely an element of coercion involved in this bill.

The purpose of my remarks is not to suggest that the banks are doing an exemplary job in providing access to capital to small business or to individuals. That is not the issue. The issue is that the banks are doing that sort of thing. Are they doing it as well as they should?

My hon. colleague opposite said that the industry committee receives quarterly reports from the way in which the chartered banks are lending money to the various businesses. It is very interesting. The most recent of those quarterly reports is dated September 30, 1997. I did a comparison with the first report dated December 1995. I compared what has happened to the lending patterns of the chartered banks in that time.

It was very interesting that in December 1995 the banks were lending more money to small businesses, that is from zero to $25,000, than they were in 1997. The total number of dollars available in fact decreased during that time period. The number of people however who received those loans increased. This really meant that more people were getting smaller loans than was the case two years previously.

When we look at the other end of the scale, the number of those who borrowed $1 million to $5 million dollars had gone down. However, the total amount available in credit was considerably higher. Therefore, there were fewer people borrowing more money.

This is all part of the banks' profit picture. It is true that the banks can argue that they are profitable organizations. Nobody will debate that. We all know that they are highly profitable. They are so profitable indeed that many people would criticize their profitability.

Let us not forget that there are a lot of other profitable businesses in this country. The issue here is not to criticize the profitability but rather to look very carefully at whether their pattern is such that we can take exception to the accessibility to the lending and the borrowing that we need to do in order to run our businesses and our own individual lives.

This bill restricts itself only to chartered banks. It also restricts itself to branches in chartered banks. There are two difficulties with this.

First of all, there are many other deposit taking institutions that are not chartered banks. I look particularly at the credit unions, caisses populaires and trust companies. Those are probably the most commonly recognized as being deposit taking institutions.

These institutions are very community centred, very involved in the community. They take money out of the community and lend money back into the community. To distinguish one particular group by saying that it must but others can do whatever they feel I do not think is quite fair. I do not think that was the intention either. Perhaps it was; I do not know.

I suppose it could be argued that because the banks have 85% of the deposits in Canada therefore in each community that is the case. It may follow or it may not. In fact in many cases it does not follow. There are other ways of depositing money.

The issue is one of reinvestment. How do we reinvest? If a bank takes substantial sums of money in deposits from a particular community, ought it not reinvest in the same proportion as it receives deposits from the community? The bill is not clear as to whether that is how it would work or whether it would not work that way. It is not known.

I would like also to refer to another provision in the bill which I think has a serious shortcoming. It suggests that a disadvantaged community is a community in which the unemployment rate once during the previous 12 month period was equal to or larger than the national average. This is to be done on an electoral basis.

An electoral district does not have a constant boundary. It changes every 10 years, but nevertheless it does change. The issue now becomes one of being very micro centred. A community goes beyond an electoral district.

If we take the city of Montreal it can in one sense be considered a community. If we look at the unemployment statistics for that community—and I agree there is more than one electoral district—it would as the larger community certainly qualify as being a disadvantaged community. Not only that one, but we could go right across Canada and most of our major centres would qualify as disadvantaged communities under that definition. If we break it down small enough into certain sections there would not be a disadvantaged community in that sense. In other cases there would be very much the opposite situation.

I suggest that there are some shortcomings in the bill. The intention may have been reasonable but the way it is worded will cause us a lot of difficulty.

Also we want to recognize the intent and purpose. Certainly my purpose on the industry committee and certainly my purpose as a parliamentarian is to make sure that there is a sound and stable financial institutional system in Canada. Our chartered banks have served us very well, but there are some very severe shortcomings. The issue is that some of our chartered banks are perhaps moving into areas that are to the disadvantage of the small borrower, the small lender, the small depositor.

I know the pressures that have come with quarterly reports have caused the banks to perhaps change their behaviour slightly but not enough to make a material difference. The intention may be okay but I think there are some difficulties.

I would also like to suggest that there is a major change coming. It is happening already in the whole financial institutions area and in particular with regard to banking and banking services. We are getting into electronic banking in a big way. In fact there are electronic banks that have no branches.

What would the legislation do in that regard? Non-branch banks also take deposits out of what would have been defined as a disadvantaged community. Would the same requirements that are imposed on chartered banks with branches be imposed on them? If not, one group is being preferred over another and it does not create fair competition or equality of competition. I do not think that is fair.

For that reason, if for no other, I would say let us vote against the bill.

[Canada Labour Code, May 8th, 1998]

I am so pleased that for a change the government has seen some wisdom coming from the official opposition. That is very good and I commend government members for it. I hope that when it comes to Group No. 2 they will remember that and vote in favour of the motion that the official opposition has presented. It is very significant that they do that because democracy is at the heart of this issue to a large degree. There are a lot of things at the heart of this issue.

I would like to get to the actual amendment that is being proposed by the official opposition. I would like to read that part of the bill which is being deleted by this amendment.

If we look at the bill we see that the connecting word is “or”. We can do this specific thing that is being codified in the legislation that currently exists governing airports, employees and the contracts that exist. Then it says “or”. We want to leave that first part in because to codify that is advisable and a good thing. But after that we find the word “or” and it states:

(b) provided any other service that may be designated by regulation of the Governor in Council,—

That opens the door to anything. It is so wide open we could drive half a dozen trucks through it and we would not know they had gone through. It continues:

—on the recommendation of the Minister, to another employer or a person acting on behalf of that employer in any industry that may be designated by regulation of the Governor in Council on the recommendation of the Minister.

That is so wide open that it really takes away one of the fundamental considerations in running a business or in negotiating a contract.

By the way, I have to slip at least one point in here to respond to the tirade of remarks that we heard just a moment ago.

The official opposition in no way opposes the organization of labour into groups to negotiate contracts. In fact we encourage that in a way that allows that kind of organization to take place in the most democratic fashion that can be devised. That is at the heart of this issue. Having done that, we need to recognize that if we are going to have contracts like that—and the idea of successor rights deals with those contracts—the one thing we do not want in those contracts is ambiguity.

Paragraph (b), which we are deleting from the proposed bill, makes it totally ambiguous as to who will and who will not be designated by the governor in council on the recommendation of the minister, and who should be included or excluded in terms of successor rights. That is precisely what contract negotiations are all about. They take away the ambiguity of salary schedules, they take away the ambiguity of benefits, bonuses, group insurance plans or whatever the employee benefits might be. All of those are written into the contract to take away that ambiguity.

The successor rights that presently exist ensure that the employee who has been employed by a previous contract can continue on through to the next employer when doing the same kind of work as the employee was doing under contract with the federal government. The employee is employed by the minister. However, paragraph (b), which we want to delete, opens it up so wide that nobody knows what in the world is going on. One of the major reasons we oppose this is because of the ambiguity.

Not only do we want definite, specific certification requirements, we want specific recognition of what exists or does not exist in terms of successor rights. We want that for three reasons: it provides stability, predictability and confidence for the contractor, the existing business, the employer and the government. We want to know what it will cost us.

I cannot believe my ears sometimes when the government seems to say only this far and no farther, but in the next instance it seems to have an absolutely open door. For the life of me I cannot understand some of the nonsense we heard yesterday about the absolutely open, unaccountable regional development agencies. They can come forward, make applications, present their budgets, have no measurable objectives, change their mandates every three or four years and the government say this is responsible.

We want to know how much an employment contract will cost. Then we can plan our budgets properly. We also want to be able to predict what the new employer will be involved in with this group of employees. We want to be confident that the contract will not be changed arbitrarily or that if another employer were to take a related contract that somehow another union would come in and change the employer's relationship with the employees. Then we would have a contradiction and a major conflict.

That brings me to the beginning of this bill. This is the number one purpose of the bill:

This enactment implements reforms to the industrial relations provisions of Part I of the Canada Labour Code, to provide a framework for collective bargaining that enhances the ability of labour and management to frame their own agreements and allows workplace disputes to be resolved in a timely and cost effective manner.

That is the underlying principle which is supposed to be governing this legislation. It is a wonderful statement. Who would not agree with that kind of statement? Then we see a provision like this and we ask: What does that do to bring about harmony and stability? What does that do to create planning, consistency and the confidence that this will work?

It is amazing the way in which Liberals can twist logic.

[Canada Labour Code, May 8th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, there are two things I could do; however, I am going to do only one. My temptation is to get into this tirade of nonsense that we were just subjected to, but I am not going to do that. I am going to talk about the amendments in Group No. 3.

[Regional Development Agencies, May 7th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I express appreciation to some of the speakers who have entered into the debate. I am somewhat disappointed in some of the views that have been expressed because some of them left a lot of imagination between what was said and what the actual truth of the situation really was.

One thing ought to be made very clear. The reason behind the motion is to eliminate inefficiencies, to eliminate duplication, to eliminate grants and subsidies to businesses which really divert funds from successful businesses and gives them to other businesses. Is that to say that none of these programs have worked? Of course they have worked but at a cost and inefficiently.

There have been some suggestions that we should have grants and subsidies. Let me just look at a couple of things that have happened. Some $11 billion of assistance was authorized over the last 16 years. Some 32,000 separate grants have been given, and 18% of them were given to 75 of the largest corporations in Canada.

If we are talking about helping the poor, that is not where this money is going. It is not going to the poor people. Hundreds of millions of dollars are going to Pratt & Whitney, De Havilland, Bombardier, Canadair, to Le Group Montreal Inc. and Air Ontario. In fact it was almost $1 billion. What has the repayment schedule been? It has been abysmal. Very little money has been repaid.

We need to recognize that some serious questions have to be asked. How can parliament continue to accept that subsidies are cost effective when we know that the evidence clearly shows that they are not? We have no way of evaluating them. How can parliament continue to support regional development agencies when study after study shows that they are not accomplishing what they were set out to do? How can parliament continue to support regional development agencies when they contribute significantly to taxpayers' burdens with so little return on the investment? These are serious questions that have to be asked.

Turning to inefficiency and overlap in particular with the BDC, SCC and Community Futures, now a big bureaucrat is sitting over top of them and saying “Look at how much more responsibility I have now. I have to have a bigger budget. I have to have more staff. I have to have bigger offices”. It is bureaucratic entrepreneurship, and it does not build the economy.

We must make all efforts to eliminate the regional development agencies and redirect the funds so that they will do what they are supposed to be doing toward tax relief, debt retirement, building the economy and reducing the size of government. That is what this was about. In this way we will support the private sector.

There is a rule for government agencies but the issue is duplication. The issue is building the private sector. Taxpayers spend money better. Left in their pockets they will manage their money better. Business will manage money far better than any government agency or any government department ever dreamt of doing. That is the principle here. Government should get out of business and let them help those people who really need the help, not the big corporate welfare bums.

[Regional Development Agencies, May 7th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, the auditor general in 1997 also did a comparison of what happened in the two years in ACOA. The main purpose for setting up ACOA was, according to the auditor general's report of 1995, to create employment. That was its main purpose.

In 1997 the auditor general reviewed again to see what had happened. He made this observation about ACOA: “The agency continues to use the assumption that all of the jobs created by the program will last for a period of 10 years. As in 1995 we were not able to find support for this assumption”.

The very purpose for which it was set up was not being met.

The report goes beyond that and states that the objectives were so general they could not be measured. The assessment process used by the agency was not significantly different from that found in the 1995 audit. This is an abysmal failure in the way in which that particular agency is run.

We go beyond that. How effective is another group? The western economic diversification agency was set up recently to cover a whole lot of things. It is supposed to do new things. Canada business development centres were set up to provide access to various government departments through the communication network. They were working. Now they are subsumed under WED.

The notorious infrastructure was working, but now it is subsumed under WED.

The community futures program was working. It is now under WED. What has been the result of all of this? In Kelowna the infrastructure program has never been less successful. The community futures program has not brought more people into the marketplace and into the working field. The business development centres do not distribute any more information than they did before.

What are the results? We have an organization. We have staff. We have bureaucrats. And the only jobs that were created on a permanent basis were for the bureaucrats.

The regional development agencies are not doing what they were set up to do. They are costing taxpayers billions of dollars. They are duplicating the work of crown corporations. They are competing directly with the private sector. They are doing the exact opposite of what they should be doing.

The wisdom is that we should eliminate them. If we have to fill the gaps that are not being met in the private sector and in the financial sector, let the agencies that exist outside of the regional development agencies, like the BDC, do the work.