This was my first experience in looking at who had applied in my riding, and there were very few small businesses on the approved list. I don't know if others had applied or not, but it didn't appear they had. There were a lot of applications from non-profit societies and that sort of thing. I would suspect that if the government, rather than handing out money to hire people, would have cut the small-business tax and given the small-business community the same kind of a break, it would probably have accomplished the same thing. It would have kept the government out of picking winners and losers. Is that fair?
On May 12th, 2016. See this statement in context.