Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I am pleased to be here with you this afternoon.
This is an opportunity to speak about my portfolio, small business and tourism.
I am here today with my associate Marie-Josée Thivièrge, Assistant Deputy Minister, and Mr. Stewart. I want to thank them for being here.
I would also like to take this opportunity to share with you the important work that this government has been doing to support two areas of great value to this country: small business and tourism.
As many of you know, I am from Beauce, a region that has been nicknamed the kingdom of business in Quebec. I am a proud Beauceron. These resourceful and ingenious business people have engineered the success of the Beauce region.
It is an honour for me to advocate the interests of Canadian entrepreneurs. I do so by sitting at the cabinet table and by meeting entrepreneurs. In a way, my role is to represent them at the table where the government's decisions are made.
As you know, small and medium enterprises are important. They represent 99% of businesses in Canada and contribute to more than 40% of our country's gross domestic product. SMEs create half of all private sector jobs.
I meet with business men and women in my riding and elsewhere in Canada. When I go door to door in my riding, or elsewhere in Canada, and when I hold round tables with entrepreneurs, I always tell them the same thing. I tell them, quite simply, thank you. I thank them because they are the ones who create the jobs and the wealth and who have enabled Canada to emerge from the last global recession, the financial crisis that we experienced in 2008.
What do small business entrepreneurs say to me in return? They're saying always the same thing. There is too much government on the back of businesses and too much government in their pockets.
The goal of our government is first to establish a business climate that enables businesses to grow. For that reason, we have made it possible for entrepreneurs to keep their money in their coffers so that they can carry out their development projects and create wealth. We have lowered the small business income tax from 12% to 11%. We have established a tax credit for entrepreneurs to encourage them to hire new employees, and we have cut red tape. Entrepreneurs told us that the government was on their backs too much and that there was too much regulation and red tape.
I was fortunate to chair a commission, with some of my parliamentary colleagues and people from the private sector, for the purpose of submitting a report to the government. Through my colleague Tony Clement, President of the Treasury Board, the government decided to act on all of our recommendations.
Entrepreneurs told us about more than 2,300 irritants that they had to overcome every day. Those irritants come from more than 18 federal government departments and organizations. We listened to entrepreneurs, and we can tell you today that more than 40% of the recommendations are now in effect. And the others will be within the year.
The main recommendation of the Red Tape Reduction Commission has already been implemented. It is the one-for-one rule. If the government wants to introduce a new regulation, the government needs to scrap an existing one. Our government believes that this new rule will turn off the tap on government red tape so that entrepreneurs can spend their time growing their businesses, not growing the government.
We have also established partnerships with 9 provinces, 3 territories and more than 650 municipalities in order to offer the BizPal program. That program, which is called PerLE in French, provides Canadians who want to start up a business with a website that posts all the administrative requirements of the federal, provincial and municipal governments.
There is a lot of traffic on the site, and it is very useful for current and future entrepreneurs. We hope that Quebec will soon be the tenth province to take part in this very popular program.
We also have a very good partnership with the Canadian Youth Business Foundation, which has helped over 5,000 young Canadians start their own businesses.
Our government will always support job creation in Canada. As you know, I am very proud to work closely with Canadian tourism industry stakeholders. The news about the tourism industry is good. That industry is growing this year and has had 13 consecutive quarters of growth since the last global recession.
Tourism spending in Canada, which represents money spent on airline tickets, hotel rooms, restaurants and so on, reached a record $8.1 billion last year, a 4.2% increase over 2011. The number of jobs in the tourism industry also rose 2% to 614,600 last year.
Last October, I launched the Federal Tourism Strategy, which is outlined on the government's website, to support this important sector. This very simple strategy addresses the concerns of tourism industry people by eliminating sector irritants so that the industry can grow even more quickly in the next few years.
One important point is that we have established a steering committee, chaired by Assistant Deputy Minister Thivièrge, as part of this strategy. The committee meets regularly with industry stakeholders to assess progress on the strategy, but also to ensure that government as a whole and the various departments and ministers involved view the tourism industry as a priority.
Let me give you an example. My colleague the Hon. Jason Kenney, who is Minister of Immigration and whose cooperation is important, has considerably increased the number of visa processing centres around the world in response to a request by the tourism industry. If we want to attract more foreign tourists to Canada, we have to make it easier for them to obtain a visa. The number of visa processing centres has therefore risen to 130 in 95 countries. Last year, Canada also issued nearly one million visas, a record number.
We will continue to promote Canada to foreign tourism markets. In February, I had the honour to travel to India with the Canadian Tourism Commission and its President and CEO Ms. McKenzie to attend Focus Canada-India 2013, an event organized by the Canadian Tourism Commission to promote the Canadian tourism industry to Indian buyers. I can tell you that the number of tourists from India and China has risen again this year. The Canadian Tourism Commission's mandate is to focus on these high-potential emerging markets over the next few years.
In closing, I want to tell you that I am available to answer your questions. Thank you for inviting us to take part in your proceedings.
Thank you.