Thank you, Mr. Chair. I do have an opening statement.
First of all, to the honourable members, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for the invitation to speak to you today about our consultation on tax planning using private corporations. I also want to thank you for taking the time to hear witnesses on our tax fairness plan.
For me, it's important to be here and to have the opportunity to listen to your views. This is a consultation, after all, and it is important to get your opinions, ideas, and insights that will help us to get this right. I'm looking forward to taking questions in a few minutes, but first I want to give you a bit of context for what it is we're trying to achieve.
The fact is that when you talk to people across the country, there is a lot of anxiety that the next generation—your kids or your grandkids—may just not be as well off as the generation of today. That's what motivates me, and that's what motivates our government. We want to make sure we create the conditions for all Canadians to succeed in what we know is a changing economy. To get there, I am committed to ensuring a healthy, thriving business environment and to protecting Canadian businesses' ability to invest, to grow, and to create jobs.
I think it's worth starting by taking a look at where we are right now. When we came into office a couple of years ago, we made a commitment to invest in Canada's middle class. We lowered taxes on middle-class Canadians and increased child benefits for those most in need. We invested for the long term in our infrastructure, because we saw this as critically important to the future of our country and to the future of our economy.
Right now we're the fastest-growing country in the G7 countries, and by a wide margin. Our economy over the last quarter grew at an impressively strong 4.5%, faster than it's grown since the beginning of 2006. In the two years since we've come to office, 400,000 new jobs have been created. Thanks in part to strong economic growth and the smart investments we've made in Canadians and for Canadians, we find ourselves with a fiscal position that's much stronger than we anticipated even only as recently as March. For the fiscal year that ended March 31, our budget deficit is $11.6 billion less than what we had projected only a relatively short while ago in budget 2016.
That's all good news, but we need to face facts. Growing the economy is not good enough. We have to work to make sure that the fruits of that economic growth go to all Canadians.
We need an economy where all Canadians, and not just a very small group of the wealthiest, should benefit from the advantages and opportunities that go along with this economic success.
There's still work to do to ensure fairness for middle-class Canadians. That's what we're talking about when we talk about our tax system—ensuring that everyone benefits from our economic growth, not just the wealthy few. From the very beginning, we said that we want an economy that benefits the middle class and all those people who are working hard to improve their situations. At the heart of that goal is a very simple premise: every Canadian needs to pay his or her fair share of taxes. That's why one of my very first acts as finance minister was to raise taxes on the top 1% so that we could cut them for nine million Canadians across our country.
One of my principal responsibilities as Minister of Finance is to ensure that our tax system is fair, efficient, and supports growth, and that it is also equitable and treats all Canadians fairly. I want you to know that I take these objectives very seriously. In each of our first two budgets, we put tax fairness front and centre, backed by significant new investments in our economy. We increased resources for the Canada Revenue Agency to improve the enforcement of tax laws that are already in place. We also continue to participate in efforts with our global partners to combat international tax evasion and avoidance.
But we're not done yet.
Honourable members, setting up a private corporation offers hard-working, middle-class business owners the ability to sell shares, raise capital, and limit liability. It gives them access to the lowest small business tax rate in G7 countries, but we know that, for the wealthy, incorporation offers something different. In some cases, it offers something quite different. What that means is that a high-income, incorporated professional can be taxed at a lower rate—for example, in the case of a doctor taxed at a lower rate than a salaried nurse practitioner working in the same office.
As the economy grows, Canadians need and deserve to know that their tax system is fair. Right now, we're just pointing out that it's not. These are big changes, and we know we need to get them right. We know we need your help and your feedback on what we're trying to achieve. That's why Minister Bardish Chagger, my new parliamentary secretary Joël Lightbound, and I are visiting small business owners, professionals, farmers, and fishers across the country and listening to ideas and answering questions.
Yesterday I spoke with Canadians across our country during a Facebook Live event and with a teleconference town hall. Tomorrow, I will be meeting with what I expect will be hundreds more in Oakville. We know it's important that we listen to people's concerns and that we listen to their ideas. It's also important for us to clearly state that hard-working Canadians, hard-working small business owners, and middle-class Canadians are clearly not the focus of our proposals.
To hard-working family farmers, we want you to know that we support you.
We know, for example, that 80% of the passive income in this country is earned by 2% of the CCPCs that are out there. The measures we're proposing will only affect a very small number of private proportions and a very, very small number of Canadians. Small businesses will continue to benefit from the lowest small business tax rate among G7 countries. The changes to the tax system being proposed will not impair a business's ability to invest, to compete, or to grow. The proposed approaches in addressing passive investment income are not about money that's being invested in a business. They're about money that's being taken out of the business, ensuring it's being taxed fairly, ensuring that the small business tax rate and the corporate tax rate actually help to support economic growth and do what we want them to do, which is to create jobs for Canadians across the country.
We're always open to better ways to fix the problems that we've identified in our consultations. But I want to be clear. We're going to fix them, because our government was elected to help to grow the middle class.
Mr. Chair, I would be pleased to take questions from the honourable members.
