Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, witnesses, for appearing here before us today.
Mr. Whyte, I'm just going over the small business report card that you circulated. I'm pretty happy with some of the results there, to be perfectly honest with you. I indicated before the meeting started that as a former operator of a small business in my riding, I participated in a lot of these studies for years. Certainly I remember an awful lot of surveys that I completed, which went towards making them. I appreciate the efforts the CFIB makes in that regard.
You correctly point out in your submission that with the way the EI program was operating, EI was merely a tax. That's what it was: a payroll tax. I'm surprised that property taxes were third among the forms of taxation that affect the growth of your business, because they're taxes that businesses pay whether they're profitable or not. Payroll taxes and property taxes have both increased in a fairly significant fashion.
I recall surveys at least a decade old, in which EI was the lead issue for CFIB. Is that correct? Is that your experience as well?