Mr. Speaker, a fundamental change is sweeping this country and this government's budget reflects it. It is a change that more than any other will determine a united Canada's prosperity for the next century.
Others have spoken in this debate on the budget's fiscal provisions, the changes in unemployment insurance, cutbacks in defence spending, new rules for capital gains exemptions, and so on. I propose to draw attention to two other areas which I believe when linked are to me more significant than all the others combined.
I look to new incentives for small businesses on the one hand and reallocation of spending on research and development on the other. Put these two concepts together and I believe we see a fundamental truth about today's economic reality and a glimpse of the economic opportunities of tomorrow.
On the historical perspective, for the better part of this century Canadian industrial production has been dominated by major foreign owned companies, principally those based in the United States and Britain. Research and development, industrial scientific research, if you will, was concentrated in the parent companies rather than in their Canadian subsidiaries. The ability to do quality industrial scientific research is a national asset which is not willingly shared by the United States, Britain, Japan, Germany, France or any other major economic power. That is a fact of international life.
Canada's answer to the problem in 1916 was to set up government funded laboratories grouped together as the National Research Council. I wish hon. members would take time some day to visit the old NRC building at 100 Sussex Drive, built during the depression in the 1930s. Not only is it one of the most interesting architecturally of the buildings in Ottawa but it also speaks through its bricks and mortars, through its terrazzo floors, its tiny laboratory rooms, of that moment in history when Canada finally invested in the brains of Canadians, in our ideas. It is a place that evokes the era of Banting, Rutherford, Best and the Canadian pioneers of this nuclear age.
The Canadian version of the National Research Council was an experiment that had no parallel in Britain and the United States, but it began poorly. Scientists are like artists. If funding is unconditional, they would rather work on pure research. They would rather explore ideas for the sake of them instead of what they might mean in terms of a country's technological progress. Most would prefer to be Einsteins, not Edisons.
The research in the early days of the National Research Council merely wandered through the woods of scientific inquiry and rarely glimpsed the sun.
The Second World War changed everything. In 1940 France collapsed. All Europe echoed to the measured tread of Hitler's armies. The United States was still neutral. The night sky over London flickered with the flashes of exploding bombs. Britain's only remaining ally of consequence was Canada. Now the National Research Council really came into its own, for Britain needed more than men and weapons, it needed science.
In co-operation with Canadian universities, the National Research Council led an incredibly varied program in applied research: new explosives, radar, sonar, chemical weapons, high altitude research. No other country, I firmly believe, given its economic size and population, contributed as much brain power to the war as Canada.
I apologize for speaking so much of the past rather than of the present, but surely our actions and attitudes of today are governed principally by what we know and what we do not know of our own history.
My colleagues in the Bloc for example embrace separatism because they perceive the historic threat only as it pertains to Quebec. Yet we all move forward, Canadians of all provinces, we all have been moving forward together. The fault is that none of us, Quebecers, Albertans, Nova Scotians, pay serious attention to our collective past, to our own accomplishments as Canadians.
How many of the 295 MPs in this House know that Canada was the second country in the world to achieve nuclear power? The first nuclear reactor outside the United States to go critical was built just upstream from Ottawa at Chalk River. We were ahead of Britain, France and even the Soviet Union. That was in 1945. We declared then that we would use nuclear energy only for peaceful purposes and we have kept faith with that promise.
The National Research Council was instrumental in the development of Canada's nuclear program. However after the war both nuclear and military research were spun off to other agencies or to the Department of National Defence. The National Research Council reverted mainly to pure research.
Meanwhile Canada's branch plant economy boomed while applied science, industrial research and development, languished. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s the foreign parents of Canadian subsidiary companies had for the most part little interest in promoting research in Canada.
Now everything has changed again just as dramatically as with the advent of the second world war. This time however the two instruments of change are computers not weapons, and a global recession not war.
Think of it. Up to about 10 years ago a scientist had to have access to a multimillion dollar computer that only a large corporation could afford if he wanted to work out complicated equations or do deep statistical analyses. Now he can do the same thing with a 486 computer worth $1,000. If he links that by modem to other computers and other information systems he has power at his fingertips which exceeds the largest supercomputer and he can work right at his own desk or even in his own home.
As for the large corporation either foreign owned or domestic they are everywhere retreating. Like the giant department stores of old they are subject to relentless competition from small enterprises which are unfettered by the leaden bureaucracies of large corporations. Even IBM long seen as the bluest of blue chips is downsizing as it contemplates diminished bottom lines.
I cannot resist citing an opposite example in my own riding. The company is called Westcam. It occupies an unprepossessing collection of old buildings next to a rural bush lot. It employs less than 100 people. Its product is spy cameras, the kind of devices that can photograph a postage stamp from miles away. Its market is highly specialized but it is worldwide. It is a small business.
High technology, small business. That is where this budget rings with a clear pure note. Out with the old, in with the new. The large corporations no longer have the lion's share of research and development. Technological innovation is going to come from the little companies, not the big ones. This government's budget addresses that fact.
Consider what the budget says. Free up capital for small business through the Canada investment fund and by putting pressure on banks. Simplify paper work. Provide funds for small businesses to hire scientists and engineers. Establish networks to share technology and business savvy. Set priorities for research directly funded by government.
There are casualties: the funding for the KAON nuclear accelerator project in British Columbia for instance and Canada's participation in the U.S. Space Station Freedom. That is another prestige project many in the American scientific community consider a wanton waste of money in terms of the return on scientific knowledge.
Canada should be getting out of that, and so we are. What are we doing instead? Canada is putting $800 million into a new space program centred on remote sensing and satellite communications. This historically is where Canadian technology has shone. We are known the world over for our prowess in this field. This expertise has largely come from medium and small businesses, not from the multinational corporations.
The National Research Council also has been revamped. For years under the previous government it has endured a steady erosion of financial support. While the Tories proclaimed to the press their dedication to science, they starved the institution that has done more for Canadian science than any other.
This government in this budget has thrown out a lifeline to the National Research Council. The schedule of cutbacks instituted by the Tories has been halted. The National Research Council can breathe again.
The future is bright. Canadians have an incredible talent for innovation. I do not care if we categorize ourselves as Quebecers or Torontonians, easterners or westerners; the fact remains we are one of the most versatile peoples on earth.
Our strength is in our tolerance, our diversity, our constant search for new ideas. These are qualities we all share. We share them in this House on all sides, not just the Liberals, but the Bloc and the Reform. In that sense, to all my colleagues I say we are one.
