Finance committee  I find that's an interesting comment to be made. Since employment insurance is an insurance, you are paying a premium. It's supposed to be there for those people who are paying the premium. Hence, that's why we have always called it a tax, because essentially what happened was those premiums were then taken away and used for other government priorities, making it essentially a tax.

Finance committee  Yes.

Finance committee  They would be pretty unhappy. It's the payroll taxes. As I talked about in the presentation, payroll taxes have the greatest effect on the growth of a business. They pay 50% of the cost of CPP for every employee. To increase the CPP would have a substantial impact, and we have fought against it as much as possible.

Finance committee  For smaller firms, payroll taxes certainly have an impact on their choices about hiring. I think a lot of them would probably take a second look at whether they could afford to hire someone because now they would have to pay more for that person. On CPP, the other thing I want to mention is that people who are self-employed pay both shares.

Finance committee  We support the increase to 50-50. As I said, it's the norm in most other levels of government. It's appropriate for public sector pension employees to be paying 50% of the bill. We also support the increase of the retirement age to age 65 for all new employees.

Finance committee  I think increasing the age of retirement to 65 would, hopefully, help cut some of the costs. Putting more of the public sector employees' contributions higher would also help sustain the cost to the system. However, these are small measures at this point. They're a great step in the right direction, but we think more needs to be done in order to deal with some of the sustainability issues coming at us down the road.

Finance committee  Yes. We've asked about what they would do. Generally, it's exactly that. They invest it back into their business. Sometimes they add extra employees, Sometimes they buy new equipment. Sometimes they pay down debt, to be fair. Right? These are things that are real for small business owners.

Finance committee  No. I can most assuredly tell you there isn't some big pot of gold sitting in the closet of the small business owners that we represent.

Finance committee  A hundred and nine thousand.

Finance committee  Yes, I would.

Finance committee  Yes. We think the framework is a good one.

Finance committee  Absolutely, they like this. Yes, you can say that.

Finance committee  Yes. We're hopeful it will take care of all of those issues. The question now becomes whether the provinces are going to implement it, and whether financial institutions are going to implement it properly.

Finance committee  Yes, that is true. The fact is the increase still applies even after the credit is in place, but we also feel at least it's some sort of credit that is available to small business owners. There is a bit of a break given to them when they do their hiring. But that is one of the limitations of the credit the way it's designed right now.

Finance committee  There's a couple of things. We have strongly recommended for the last year or two to have the EI hiring credit expanded as well as extended beyond 2011 into 2012 and 2013. When I say expanded I mean it should be available to firms with more than $10,000 in EI premiums, perhaps $15,000 or whatever, and perhaps it could be increased gradually every year to make sure those folks are always captured.