Refine by MP, party, committee, province, or result type.
International Trade committee I hope so, I think is the answer. Certainly going paperless can often be an advantage, but it can also not necessarily change much. If you're just transferring what was on paper onto a screen, and you're still having to pull the data, and you still have to figure out how to get that information, it doesn't necessarily change anything, but if they are making things more efficient, if you can track where your shipments are going, that does make a huge difference.
February 24th, 2020Committee meeting
Corinne Pohlmann
International Trade committee I am asked that question a lot, and there's not an easy answer because they are so disparate across the country. They are all focused on different things. When you're running your business, you're really just focused on running your business. Similar to what I think my colleague at RCC said, it is working with organizations like ours because they trust us.
February 24th, 2020Committee meeting
Corinne Pohlmann
International Trade committee I didn't say that.
February 24th, 2020Committee meeting
Corinne Pohlmann
International Trade committee Including a chapter is a big start, because that never was the case before, and expanding what's already in that chapter. Right now, actually nothing is binding in that particular chapter. Maybe making parts of it more binding as there is an obligation on the countries that are signatories to the agreement to come together and create common websites that provide services or programs, share information that combines everybody's approach to trade, and how they are going to deal with small businesses.
February 24th, 2020Committee meeting
Corinne Pohlmann
International Trade committee In terms of border flow as well as the whole process you have to go through in order to get a product across the border, I think we could look at ways to be more efficient around that. Right now you have things like HS classifications. If you continually import the same thing all the time, why do you always have to put down every single classification every time?
February 24th, 2020Committee meeting
Corinne Pohlmann
International Trade committee Yes. The small business chapter in this agreement is very important. It's only the second or third agreement now. The small business chapter first appeared in the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, and this one has adopted it at this scale. The reason it's important is that it recognizes the differences small businesses have in international trade.
February 24th, 2020Committee meeting
Corinne Pohlmann
International Trade committee That would be good.
February 24th, 2020Committee meeting
Corinne Pohlmann
International Trade committee It's unlikely they're aware that there's a small business chapter; however, we're doing what we can in surveys to make them aware of the fact that there is a small business chapter and, more importantly, what that actually means. That's the key. It doesn't really matter if there are a bunch of words as long as there's action taking place.
February 24th, 2020Committee meeting
Corinne Pohlmann
International Trade committee Organizations like EDC and the trade commissioner service for that matter are not well known either among small companies. In fact, when they do learn about them, they often feel like they're not really meant for them and that they're meant for bigger companies. We're constantly educating them ourselves to say, “No, actually, they're meant for you.”
February 24th, 2020Committee meeting
Corinne Pohlmann
International Trade committee Yes, and simplifying the processes.
February 24th, 2020Committee meeting
Corinne Pohlmann
International Trade committee Yes, and that's part of the reason we're a bit worried about the impact this is going to have. Canada Post is the one that's the real problem. It has never been the couriers. I think that the couriers have always done a fairly good job of collecting duties and taxes, even under the current rules.
February 24th, 2020Committee meeting
Corinne Pohlmann
International Trade committee Thank you for the opportunity to be here today to share the perspectives of small and medium-sized companies on the trade agreement between Canada, the United States and Mexico. I'll be sharing my time with Jasmin Guénette, my colleague. He'll be starting off, and I will be ending the presentation.
February 24th, 2020Committee meeting
Corinne Pohlmann
International Trade committee Thank you, Jasmin. We'll get into our priorities and recommendations. I want to say, first and foremost, that we encourage the government to move forward on ratifying this agreement as soon as possible. We have experienced a lot of uncertainty in international trade over the past few years, and this would help bring some needed stability with Canada's largest trading partner.
February 24th, 2020Committee meeting
Corinne Pohlmann
Industry committee It's funny, because to prepare for this.... CFIB has a counselling service and counsellors across the country respond to inquiries from our members. We do about 36,000 calls a year, and inquiries regarding the CRA account for probably one in every four of those calls. I had my colleague put together a list of specific examples, which I have here.
February 5th, 2019Committee meeting
Corinne Pohlmann
Industry committee I was going to say that one of the things we have found where regulatory modernization has been the most effective is political leadership. If the political leadership writes into the mandate of the officials that they must do this and then keeps them to it, that is the most effective way to get change when it comes to regulation.
February 5th, 2019Committee meeting
Corinne Pohlmann