Good morning, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before the finance committee again.
To put into context the organization that I represent, we have 126 community chambers in the province of Alberta who, in turn, represent in excess of 25,000 businesses. About 95% of those businesses are small and medium-sized enterprises. All community chambers operating in Alberta are members of the Alberta chambers and the Canadian chamber so we have a tremendous amount of integration from the local to the provincial to the federal level.
Policies come from our community chambers and are debated at their AGM. Once adopted they become our policy.
I understand that you have our submission, and I'm assuming you reviewed it. I'm prepared to answer any questions you may have on it, but there are a few things I'd like to touch on.
We have five recommendations. The most important one to us is the establishment of a royal commission to review the Income Tax Act. At the last Canadian chamber AGM two years ago this received 99% support among the delegates. If fairness and simplicity is desired, a royal commission is needed. The last royal commission occurred in the 1960s, I believe, about 50 years ago. The current act is an outdated piece of machinery with multiple pieces welded on the side that don't work well with each other. If we're looking at progressing into this century, perhaps we should look at a full review.
We need to be mindful of cost layering on small and medium-sized businesses. Even if a change appears small in budget deliberations, that adds costs onto small and medium-sized businesses. You need to be cautious. We've seen a continual layering of costs from the municipal, the provincial particularly, and the federal level. All those small changes added one on top of the other have a major impact on small and medium-sized businesses. For example, the implementation of enhanced CPP in 2019 will have a cost impact on small businesses.
We would appreciate it if you would implement the Standing Senate Committee on Banking, Trade and Commerce recommendation and fund the University of Calgary's proposed northern infrastructure corridor or transportation utility corridor. It is imperative that we do future viewing planning as to how we're going to move product across this country.
As the Alberta Chambers of Commerce—I don't think you'd expect anything else from us—one of our recommendations is to get the federal budget balanced. It has a tremendous impact on costs that are moved down to various businesses.
One other thing that is probably up for consideration this year in the budget will be national pharmacare. I would caution you to take a very clear look at the cost impact of this. The Canadian chamber submitted a submission to the Government of Canada suggesting that if you are considering national pharmacare, to address the gaps, not to introduce a full national pharmacare program on all. Currently 1.8% of Canadians do not have coverage either through their employer or through a provincial program, so rather than changing the entire system, we would caution you that that would be very costly and before you proceed with anything, you understand the cost implications.
It was very fortuitous that yesterday the Senate Committee on Banking, Trade and Commerce released their report “Canada: Still Open for Business?”. Specifically within that report is the Senate committee's support for, one, a royal commission; two, reducing corporate tax rates and temporarily allowing the full and immediate deduction of all capital costs to be in accord with the United States; three, improving Canada's regulatory regime to ensure that a project can get approved and be completed, for example, the Trans Mountain pipeline.
Bill C-69, in my opinion, is definitely not the way to go if you're looking at bolstering or coming up with a very strong regulatory system that has any chance of success. Hal Kvisle, the former CEO and president of TransCanada PipeLines suggests that any pipeline company under Bill C-69 would be foolish to apply for any type of pipeline project.
You should improve Canada's trade infrastructure, for example rail, pipelines, roads and ports. A classic example here in Alberta is that we have only one 24-hour border crossing, whereas other provinces have multiple 24-hour border crossings. That impacts us greatly, as far as trade goes. That 24-hour border crossing is in the far west side of the province. Anything that is coming up from the central United States has to go out of its way to get back into Alberta.
We should negotiate and implement free trade agreements with fast-growing economies, and while we're at it, reduce interprovincial trade barriers. In some cases, it's easier to trade with the United States than it is to trade across this country.
Those are my prepared comments, Mr. Chair. I'm prepared to answer any questions.