Thanks, Corinne.
As most of you already know, Canada's small and medium-sized business sector is the backbone of the Canadian economy. It accounts for roughly 50% of our GDP and almost 60% of our total employment.
In terms of job creation, this part of the economy plays a disproportionately large role. This was highlighted in a recent study by Industry Canada that looked at net job creation by firms that have been in continuous operation for over ten years, something actually highlighted at the top of page 2 in our slides. Basically, this study indicated that when it comes to hyper- and strong employment, the smaller and medium-sized business sector has made a remarkable contribution to the Canadian economy over the last decade.
The next question we need to ask ourselves is if we want this sector to continue to grow and thrive. We need to understand its current challenges and issues. As Corinne mentioned, we represent 105,000 members. One of the things we do to stay abreast of current issues in the small and medium-sized business sector is regularly survey our members.
One of the questions we consistently ask our members is what their top issues of concern are. If you look at the bottom of page 2, the slide “SME Priority Issues” highlights our latest findings on that very question. As you can see, our members' top three priority issues right now are the total tax burden, government regulation and the paper burden, and the shortage of qualified labour.
If you look at the slide following that one, you'll notice that for a number of years now we have been watching the concern over the shortage of qualified labour gradually increase. In fact, in some provinces, like Alberta, the concern over the shortage of qualified labour has become so serious that it has actually surpassed the total tax burden. That's something we have never seen before in all our surveying, and we've been tracking these issues for a very long time.
Why should we care about this? We don't expect the problem to get better. We actually expect the problem to continue growing. A good example is that in December, 31% of our members indicated that they expect to increase full-time employment within their firm. These are relatively healthy levels, and we expect these levels to stay healthy. But what this means is that it will become harder and harder to hire more people.
If you look at the next slide, this is problematic because it's creating a rise in the number of unfilled positions across Canada. For example, the long-term job vacancy rate, which highlights the number of positions that have been available for four months or longer, has steadily been increasing since 2004. This is problematic because it's having a serious impact on the economy, in the sense that it is forcing businesses to forgo new opportunities or expansion opportunities simply because they do not have the resources to pursue these new opportunities. Although the problem is more acute in some provinces, like Alberta, it is a problem that we have identified across the country, in every province.
I'm now going to pass it back to Corinne.