Industry Committee on April 30th, 2013

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

The fact that we will have a balanced budget by 2015.

[Corinne Pohlmann]

That is very important to our members. It's among one of the top two or three most important issues for our members, that governments at all levels look to find ways to bring budgets back into balance as soon as possible.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

I always find the line of questioning of opposition parties in these meetings interesting, because they zeroed in on that $350 million a year right there. The fact is, that if you look at the NDP costing document from the last election, they had about $70 billion—

[Hélène LeBlanc, NDP, LaSalle—Émard, QC]

Mr. Chair, point of order.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

It's going to be about procedure, right?

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

I don't think so.

[Hélène LeBlanc, NDP, LaSalle—Émard, QC]

I'm sorry. I think we're conducting a very efficient line of questioning on a lot of things. I see Mr. Lake's direction going into a more political framework. I think I would like the questions to stick to the study we have at hand and the great presentation that we had.

I feel that the line of questioning is out of order.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

I understand, Madame LeBlanc, but my job here is simply to be a referee on procedure and not on debate.

[Hélène LeBlanc, NDP, LaSalle—Émard, QC]

But we are not in debate here. We're questioning experts, not questioning another party's position.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

I understand that. Whatever you want to call the dialogue that we have, the substance of it, unless it veers way off track—

[Hélène LeBlanc, NDP, LaSalle—Émard, QC]

It is already veering off. Sorry, Mr. Chair, it is veering off in a direction that is not really conducive to the professionalism of this committee.

We have presentations, we have points here, and let's question our experts on their presentations. We stick to that point on this side and we will continue to do so.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Thank you, Madame LeBlanc.

You may continue, Mr. Lake.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I think I heard the word “irrelevant” coming from the other side. I would say that I'm referring to the NDP's actual, printed, costed document from the last election campaign. I don't know, but I would say that it's relevant to the discussion. It clearly lays out a plan to increase government spending by about $70 billion over four years. Part of that, I would point out, is an increase in the corporate tax rate by 30%, going up to 19.5%.

When we talk about indeterminately extending what were stimulus measures in the budget—it's not just one stimulus measure, it's many stimulus measures that they would be pushing for continuing—are we willing to increase business taxes by 30% to do that in your organization's views?

Ms. Pohlmann and Mr. Smith.

[Scott Smith]

I think it's a delicate balance between being able to find the right stimulus for business that will stimulate the economy and drive revenues for government in taxes in different forms, and finding ways to balance the budget. From the chamber's perspective, yes, a balanced budget is very important as is finding the right tax incentives for business to be able to be competitive globally.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

The answer was to increase corporate tax rates to 19.5%. Would the Canadian Chamber of Commerce be in favour of that?

[Scott Smith]

No.

[François Lapointe, NDP, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Point of order.

Our platform called for lower taxes for SMEs.

Two can play at your game, if you want. It may not be a point of order, but since you seem to playing the game to such an extent, I would like to remind you that the same platform called for lower taxes for SMEs.

If you stop playing this little game, I will stop right away.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Listen, all of my colleagues, I know there are occasions when all members say things that are unsavoury to other members in regard to the point at order. Calling for points of order regarding procedure is not applicable, really. If we're going to continue to do that, I'll suspend the meeting until it settles down.

Go ahead, Mr. Lake.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Thank you.

I don't think it's out of order for me to raise relevant questions related to the line of questioning coming from the opposition. The opposition's typically questions government measures in certain areas. I certainly think, as we're evaluating the alternatives, that it's quite fair to put both alternatives on the table and to make sure we're clear on what those alternatives are.

You can't argue, as I'm reading off your budget document. So if you're saying it's a lie, you're basically calling your own budget document a lie. It's right there in black and white: page 3, under “Revenues”, “Corporate Tax Rate Restoration to 19.5%”. It's clear. It would raise $5.9 billion in 2011-12, $8.6 billion in 2012-13, $9.3 billion in 2013-14, and $9.9 billion in 2014-15. I'm actually quoting from the NDP budget document. In the end, it says “Be a part of it”. You know, some Canadians may not want to be a part of that. And I'm quoting from your own budget document, so....

Anyway, back to a line of questioning here, if I could....

How much time do I have, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Thirty seconds.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Thirty seconds.

You know what, I think I'll just leave it for 30 seconds.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Thank you, Mr. Lake.

Mr. Thibeault, for five minutes.

[Glenn Thibeault, NDP, Sudbury, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm looking forward to actually getting to some factual information here.

Let's talk about the payments task force, which did some great work. I know the CFIB was part of that. So were the Canadian Payments Association, PIAC, FCAC, and the Consumers' Association of Canada. They introduced that report. They gave it to the Minister of Finance. It was introduced in the House in December 2011.

The task force for the payments system review called for this legislation, which could potentially save the Canadian economy $32 billion in productivity gains through the modernization of Canada's payment system. Now according to the task force, Canadian payment regulation is being quickly outpaced by countries like Romania and Peru. This comes from that task force report. We're a G-8 country; they are not.

The task force also indicated “that unless Canada develops a modern digital payments system, Canadians will be unable to fully engage in the digital economy of the 21st Century”, of course “leading to a lower standard of living across the country and a loss in international competitiveness”. Since this was introduced in the House, nothing has come from this government to address the payment systems report.

I'll give you a “for instance” on this:

Small businesses are frustrated by the lack of digital alternatives to paper cheques. (Eighty per cent of small business payments are made by cheque because there is no accessible, reasonably priced electronic payment alternative.)

Industry has indicated that it “has not implemented change due in part to uncertainty and lack of coordination”, which the government should be leading on by example, both in terms of adopting new practices and coordinating efficiencies in the private sector.

So I'd like to ask this question of both the CFIB and to the Chamber: in your view or opinion, what role should government take to encourage small and medium-sized enterprises to digitize their payment and invoicing systems? Should the government solely be leading by example, or should it be playing an active role assisting SMEs in modernizing their payment and invoicing practices? I'll start from there.

[Corinne Pohlmann]

The data you just quoted came from one of our surveys, where we do know that 80% of our members are still using cheques for business-to-business transactions. That's really where the biggest hurdle is: it's these business-to-business types of payments. For business-to-consumer transactions, there are the credit card and debit card types of systems out there, but it's the business-to-business side of things that we don't really have an effective electronic payment system for that is affordable and secure and accessible to smaller companies. Part of that has to come from the banking sector itself, and finding ways to bring that group together. That's not always easy to do, to come up with ideas on how that can be done most effectively.

There is something called FinPay now that has been created, which is a group of those types of companies, including CFIB as part of that group, to have those sorts of discussions, and hopefully move that along. We would like to see it move more quickly, absolutely, whether it should be government or private sector industries, or perhaps a combination of both, that help create these electronic payment systems in practice in Canada. It's difficult for me to say who has the best role. We would probably move towards that the private sector should be really developing that, and making it accessible to smaller firms.

But at the moment that is where the big hurdle is: how do we make those systems effective for those business-to-business transactions so that we are moving away from paper-based and more to this digital online type of payment system?

[Glenn Thibeault, NDP, Sudbury, ON]

Would you have any response to that?