Finance committee  We agree with the CME. We ourselves have more than 12,000 manufacturing businesses as members, and they're all Canadian-owned companies. More than three-quarters of them felt that this is a good measure for them, to help them grow, maintain, and sustain the viability of their businesses.

Finance committee  Certainly, it makes them much more competitive. One thing we certainly want to encourage is more growth in the Canadian economy through getting businesses to start their businesses. One thing we've discovered is that the cost of doing business is still pricey. Anything that helps reduce that cost is going to be important in encouraging more people to potentially go into business and in encouraging more businesses to potentially look at exporting or trading into other countries.

Finance committee  Hopefully it will. I think it's important. Again, I want to give kudos to Canada for recognizing that there are higher costs for small businesses. This is one way to help alleviate some of those costs. I think it's important and a measure that needs to be kept, because it's something that really does give us an advantage and is one of the reasons we have so many start-ups in Canada that at least get going on the ground.

Finance committee  I haven't looked at the most recent data, but I know that Canada does relatively well in new start-ups. That's what you want. You want to encourage that kind of growth and that sort of turnover. Of course, businesses go under as well, but that's the kind of churn you want to have.

Finance committee  Exactly.

Finance committee  Certainly, as I said, launching a business can be expensive, and things like the cost of red tape and getting access to financing can be very difficult. By having a lower small business tax rate, you're allowing those businesses to keep more of their own money and to invest it back into their business, rather than having to look externally for that financing, and to deal more easily with the red tape.

Finance committee  That was one of my comments. The only thing that could have made it better is if it could have been implemented immediately. We believe that would help in boosting the confidence of small businesses, which we think ultimately would help the economy overall.

Finance committee  Our members are telling us it's getting worse. We did some research back in January that found the cost of compliance overall is costing the Canadian economy about $37 billion a year.

Finance committee  For all levels of government, not just federal.

Finance committee  Just to fill out forms. Not just tax forms, but all kinds of compliance. It's $37 billion a year, and we believe that's a conservative estimate.

Finance committee  No, we do not agree with that. We're certainly hearing that argument more and more, but we believe that the number that seems to bunch up around that threshold is relatively small compared to the huge advantages it gives to so many other small businesses. We also don't know if those people stay at that threshold or if they do that for a year or two as they grow, and then they move on into the next threshold level.

Finance committee  It would be hard for me to comment on which causes the other, but when we have tracked small business confidence to GDP, and as you can see it tracks fairly well, it's hard to know the difference. We're asking our members in this particular question how they see their business doing over the next year: better, same or worse.

Finance committee  Are you asking me that? Neither are issues we've commented very much on, so I don't know exactly when they....

Finance committee  Good morning and thank you for the opportunity to be here. CFIB is a not-for-profit, non-partisan organization representing more than 109,000 small and medium-sized businesses across Canada that collectively employ more than 1.25 million Canadians and represent about $75 billion in GDP.

International Trade committee  Reduce trade barriers. Ultimately, that's the biggest impact for a small company. Whether that's a free trade agreement or whether that's importing into Canada through CBSA, just try to reduce them as much as possible.