Mr. Chairman, like most governments across the country, we do offer through the Business Credit Corporation a service which is a lender of last resort. There is a fairly high risk. I believe our losses are somewhere around 14 percent, which is not bad when we look at the experience of other provinces.
There is a need to assist northern businesses. Very often, northern businesses that are going into new ventures or areas where things have not been tried before, do face high risk. If we did not do it, we might end up in a situation where either businesses would never get started, we would never see the diversification we need in our economy, or we would just see the more well-healed bigger companies coming in and basically owning everything. I think there is a need to continue to provide that kind of higher risk, but the risk has to be within reason. The need to provide a higher risk support, but it has to be within reason. It cannot get out of hand.
I think we have good people in the Business Credit Corporation and RWED and Development Corporation who manage to maintain a fairly good record, compared to other jurisdictions. I am pleased with some of the changes we have made recently. I think we are heading in the right direction.
As we do the review of all of our services, then we have to, of course, revisit that and decide what level we are going to provide it. Some of the cases we have done it through loans. In some cases, we have done it through preferred shares in ventures. In other cases, we have simply done loan guarantees. As a government, we have a responsibility to assist our businesses, northern businesses, in order that we develop a fairly diversified economy. I expect that we will stay in it as a government. Thank you.