Sure. Thank you for the question.
Look, there are lots of pressures on lots of Canadians from different walks of life, including small business owners. Related to some of the previous questions, one of the big worries on my plate right now is the deadline for the Canada emergency business account loans, the 900,000 loans given to small and medium-sized firms during the pandemic. Many business owners are calling us every day asking how on earth they are going to repay this loan in order to keep the benefits by the end of this year. There are big worries from small business owners on that front too.
With respect to your specific questions, small business owners are really struggling themselves and are dealing with giant expectations for wage increases at all levels among their employees. Wages have gone up dramatically among SMEs this year, and expectations are for that to even.... We've seen record-level increases from our members at a time when they just can't afford it.
More money left in the pockets of the business owner does allow them to reinvest that in terms of higher wages, investing and growing their business and putting more shifts on the floor. Tax reductions really can help. Sadly, we've moved in the opposite direction. Rather than keeping taxes low, we've raised so many taxes, including profit insensitive taxes like EI and CPP. Every Canadian at the beginning of this year saw a drop in their take-home income because EI went up and CPP went up, at a time when many Canadians couldn't afford it. The business owner had to dig deeper to pay their share of the EI and CPP premiums at that moment.
This means the business owner has fewer resources to pay better wages to their employees, which could help, of course, on a virtuous circle of reinvesting those dollars into their workers for them to pay their bills.