Thank you, Mr. Chair, and welcome to the presenters.
Even though all of you are very key for us in making decisions in the right direction, I'm going to focus on Mr. Dennis Howlett's presentation, because there is one issue he touched on that hits home. All politics is local, and locally it affected me a lot.
You mentioned important commerce companies are squeezing out many Canadian media companies, taxi companies, hotels, retailers, and also small businesses. If I look at my riding, my constituency of Surrey—Newton, I see that it's 85% small businesses. There are a large number of taxi owner-operators living in my constituency as well, and this has been a key in British Columbia, even though Uber hasn't come there yet.
They have taken a risk in their lives. When they are on the road, there's always a danger. They have invested their capital in buying those plates and maintaining them, and then they work long hours. Now all of a sudden Uber comes in, and their capital goes down the drain. They're at an age when their children are going to university, and it's even much harder now.
What could the government have done to avoid this situation, or what could the taxi companies have done, on the other hand, so this would not have occurred, even though we charged some GST? I think it's more than just putting a GST on Uber.