Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There's no reference to it in the Minister's remarks, but several years ago there was a proposal to have a development corporation. The reason for that was we really did believe that this department would be doing economic development. The thought was there are lots of people who are natural entrepreneurs in the territories who would like to do things and who maybe need to know more about something or need to have some assistance.

When, about four or five years ago, we proposed some kind of development corporation, I was shocked when the government came forward with an act to create a corporation that would run businesses. That's what the corporation was to do. I think anyone who listened to Mr. Martin's budget address this afternoon will know that nearly every government now is trying to get out of those things which are business-like. Business should look after business. What I had hoped would have happened some years ago when the initiative was taken to establish a development corporation was that there would have been a pool of money and a network put in place for real economic development to take place.

In other words, if you wanted to establish a brewery, you could get a brew master for six months to show you how to do it, or if you were going to go into meat processing, you could get somebody to help you set up a meat processing operation so that you wouldn't be buying things and trying to run them.

It is pretty clear that governments are not really good at running businesses; it is not what they do. It is clear from the comments that we heard this afternoon that that is certainly the way the federal government is going and that's the way many of the provinces are going. They are going to try to do the things that governments do and try to do them well, like providing services, but business-type operations will be run by business. All government can do is provide some kind of support and assistance. That's what I had hoped would have happened some years ago when the opportunity was there to help and assist in economic development.

That's history now. We've got it. But, I never saw that as the way to go. Many of us didn't, but it was the wish of the government to proceed in that direction because it was felt that there had to some hands-on approaches to developing businesses and economic enterprises. Even though it was arm's length and run by a corporation, it was still really seen as being too close to government. That's the first comment I want to make: that government should get out of business and do government -- which they do well -- and we should try to find as many ways as we can to support and help business to develop. We should assume that governments should only have a supportive role and maybe help to create conditions, through all kinds of regimes, to help support business.

That brings me to my second point. When I responded to Mr. Pollard's budget the other day, I only had one criticism. First of all, it was said that the only hope we have is to create wealth; that we can't do it by trying to squeeze water out of one rock. We have to create wealth. To do that, we have to develop a private sector that will create jobs and so on. Yet, in this budget, I see several references to increases in fees in Economic Development, and different schedules and tariffs. If you are going to depend on private enterprise to create the wealth that we all recognize we're going to need, then it seems to me to be non-productive to then tax them because they can afford to pay a little bit more by increasing fees, licences and everything else.

If the Minister is going to respond, I would like to get some kind of feeling about what these fees and licence increases are because I know there is interest out there to find out exactly what the government has in mind in terms of imposing increases as revenue initiatives. Those are the only two comments I have to make.

I really believe that government should look again at what economic development is, rather than taking the position that government is going to run things through whatever agency to bring business on stream and make it productive. To me, the best thing is to try to find out where there is initiative and find some way of helping those people achieve their visions, what they want to do, by giving them access to the kinds of expertise they need to get off the ground. When you go into business, you are taking a big risk, especially if you have a fair amount of personal capital involved. You want to have some degree of comfort in knowing that there is someone who knows what they're doing and can help you to set up, at least for a certain period of time, as you learn the new enterprise you had a vision about but about which you need to know a little bit more.

That's what I thought economic development was all about: following other people's visions -- not what the government sees as a vision, but what people really want to do -- and helping them to determine whether they are feasible or not. Those are my two comments, Mr. Chairman. I would appreciate some kind of response, at least on some of it.