Human Resources committee  EI definitely does serve, as do many other support programs, as a disincentive to getting people back to work. If there are other forms of compensation that become too easy to get on or stay on and that replace too high a percentage of the overall income.... We have to remember t

Human Resources committee  I can tell you for certain that for small businesses the idea of a training tax, which is the program you're specifically citing, is something they oppose to the bottoms of their souls. The idea of taxing training and then having a credit that you could apply against if you demon

Human Resources committee  Right.

Human Resources committee  We have, and some of the disincentives are the ones that are the thing I'm not supposed to talk about--employment insurance—

Human Resources committee  Terrific.

Human Resources committee  I don't think I'd have any conceptual problem with the suggestion that has just been made. To a degree it sounds similar to what already exists with the work-sharing program. That was something our members did say was quite helpful to them during the recession. There was the abil

Human Resources committee  Since my light is on here, I'll go ahead. I'll address just a couple of the questions. I won't address them all; otherwise, there would be no time left. On the information for job seekers, I struggle with this one a little bit, in that it is very hard for governments to know—it'

Human Resources committee  On the question of whether there is an analysis of wage levels for those who are in that category where it's on-the-job training, we do have some data. I don't have it in this deck. I would have to do a little bit of investigation as to what it is, but I will say from the outset

Human Resources committee  They can, yes.

Human Resources committee  Very good—I'm happy to do that. My last point about employment insurance is that EI policies right now suggest that you're not allowed to get benefits if you are fired or if you're laid off, but everybody knows that you go into the EI office with a good sob story about how the e

Human Resources committee  Yes. That was my last comment. Moving on to some of the other major policy levers that the federal government has in its hands, there's the training side of the equation. We're very pleased with the EI hiring credit. We think it's a very good means of doing that. One of the th

Human Resources committee  This is a five-minute block, I'm assuming.

Human Resources committee  Very good. Thanks very much for allowing us to be here today. We're thrilled to talk about a subject that is hot in the minds of small and medium-sized business owners from coast to coast: the shortage of skills and the increasing shortage of labour. We've been on this issue fo

Finance committee  Sure. There are essentially a million small businesses in Canada, and that would be a job from every one of them. That is the potential impact. Again, I should say that was the doubling of the CPP benefit, which was a 60% increase in premiums in our study.

Finance committee  We can't measure this in one year. The success and failure of the PRPP tool is going to need to be measured over several years. It's going to be a slow build. The first step will be converting a lot of the group RRSPs to PRPPs. Beyond that, there will be expansion of coverage. Ou