Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Welcome, everyone. It's great to see everybody.
I want to welcome Mr. Lightbound, the parliamentary secretary.
It's great to have you here today.
I'll focus my comments and questions on Bill C-82, this multilateral convention. I think it speaks to two things our government has put forward: tax fairness and tax simplification.
When I think about tax fairness for the residents and the entrepreneurs of my riding of Vaughan—Woodbridge, I think about the tax cut on the middle-income tax bracket that has benefited nine million Canadians. It's about a $20-billion tax cut over five years, which has helped grow our economy, strengthen the middle class and has helped those working hard to join the middle class.
I think about our small business tax cut now at 9% which, for firms earning up to $500,000 on the accounting standard, is about $7,500 per year in savings that they can invest in their businesses.
I think of the nearly 13,000 small businesses in the city of Vaughan that employ over 200,000 workers who will benefit from the small business tax cut, or if they're too large, they'll stay at the corporate income tax rate, which is competitive worldwide. But they'll also benefit from our accelerated investment instrument that we introduced in the fall economic statement, which now, in terms of tax fairness, and also tax competitiveness, means that we now have a lower marginal effective tax rate on new investment than the United States, by 4%. What does this mean for Canadians and the residents of my riding of Vaughan—Woodbridge? It means that over 850,000 new jobs have been created in Canada since October 2015, the majority full time, the majority private sector, which is near and dear to my heart after 23 years in the private sector.
I think we're on the right path. For background, I sat on the Accounting Standards Board User Advisory Council for a number of years. I used accounting statements for many years as an analyst both on Bay Street and Wall Street, but as a kid I worked at McDonald's and grew up taking the bus as many others did. I look at Bill C-82 and I say our government continues to be on the right track in adopting base erosion and profit shifting and this multilateral convention.
I could continue speaking about the number of great things our government has done, but now I'll ask my first question.
I hear some chirping from the Conservatives, which I guess I'm used to sometimes.
I will ask my first question in reference to when the implementation date is of Bill C-82. Second, how does this instrument prevent treaty abuse?