It's pretty typical for members of our organization—builders and renovators—to have family-operated businesses with different members of the family participating, such as husband and wife. It's very common for one spouse to be the on-site person and the other person to be doing the books.
Family members are participating in different ways in trying to grow the business and also, in terms of the future, looking at protecting against downturns, since we know housing is very cyclical. They're looking at the ability to put away investment for a rainy day. They tend to be not eligible for unemployment insurance or anything like that in those instances, and most entrepreneurs, even if they set up their business to magically be in that position, don't want to be. They're not that kind of people. They want to be self-sufficient. They're also looking at their retirement savings and the different vehicles they can use for that. Again, they're not on pensions, and RRSPs only go so far. All of this is part of it.
Also, then, you're typically building a family business that you want to get your children involved in—if they actually want to work with you—and then pass on to them at one point. Any changes in taxation that are going to make that less desirable or even less feasible all run into this, which really begs the question: are we still going to be encouraging people to get into this type of entrepreneurial position of running the family business? Or maybe they're going to say, “You know what, forget it, I'll just get a regular job.” Then do we lose the entrepreneurial spirit?