Finance committee  Pat Kelly is my grandfather's name too. We are really worried about the levels of debt that businesses are incurring. As I was saying in my commentary, there is a growing sense that the momentum—in terms of getting government support programs amended, changed and fixed—seems to

Finance committee  I agree with your assessment. The government has been moving to fix, based on feedback, in real time. I don't fault government for not getting these programs out. I fault it for the slowness in some of them, but I don't fault it for not getting them all right the very first day.

Finance committee  Thank you very much, Chair and members of the committee. It's great to be with you again. I want to share with you some new data from CFIB—we just put some out this morning. Of course we also have a few recommendations for you. A deck was sent around in English and French. You

Finance committee  We've been doing a lot of thinking about just that. It requires careful coordination with the provincial governments, obviously. Provinces are the ones that have put the emergency services rules in place. I will say that while we did need to put very blunt measures in place quick

Finance committee  It's an excellent question and I absolutely 100% agree with its premise that the reasons.... Subsidies for business are a bad thing. They create all sorts of terrible incentives and we should do as little subsidization as possible. This is, of course, very different. The govern

Finance committee  I was trying to switch to a telephone. I don't know if this is any better.

Finance committee  Okay. Look, many changes have already happened during the crisis. In any crisis there are some takeaways that will be beneficial for businesses to continue with afterward. Canada has been slow to adopt online commerce. I know that throughout the emergency, many firms have been m

Finance committee  Yes, we are. We have data showing that about 60% of our members were qualified for CEBA with the original rules. It went up to about 70% to 75% of our members when the government expanded the payroll from $20,000 to $1.5 million, but there still remain about a quarter of small bu

Finance committee  Yes. We are encouraging all of our members to try to negotiate with their landlords, and many have. Unfortunately, what that's doing, though, is just deferring bills. Very few have offered any actual reductions in their bills. I do worry that if all we're doing is deferring a lot

Finance committee  I've just killed my video signal, hoping that the audio will improve. Look, there's a lot more that banks can do. We have suggested, for example, with respect to lines of credit, that we would like banks to simply expand lines of credit that they already have. It's difficult for

Finance committee  I'll keep my answer very short. I get the desire on the part of the government to make sure that the benefit of these programs, which are incredibly costly, goes to those who are most in need. The challenge with designing that in these emergency days is that we end up delaying t

Finance committee  The government has had a problem with dividends since they've taken office, and I think we saw that in the 2017 tax hike. I hate to say it, but we have to include businesses that have dividends. I've said to government on several occasions that we can resume the debate immediat

Finance committee  I think it could be quite effective. We are of course looking for a program like that. The design that the federal government has announced so far is that there would be loans to landlords, with a portion of the loan being forgivable, and then the benefit could be conferred upon

Finance committee  One thing we're hoping is that the government will pick up the tab for the majority of the rent bill from businesses that have essentially been shut down as a result of the pandemic. Of course, provincial governments have ordered many businesses to close, but the costs of rent ha

Finance committee  Thank you. Yes, there are. Canada is getting there. It is starting to pick up some of the examples that have worked in other countries. Unfortunately, it's doing it really, really slowly. I want to say, just for the record, that I recognize that civil servants have been working