Good morning, Mr. Bowes. It's great to have you with us here today.
I'm going to follow on the line of questioning of my honourable colleague, Mr. Schmale, which I think is going down a road that we don't explore enough. I do a lot of stakeholder engagement in my riding. I'm a small-business owner myself, and traditionally have been entrepreneurial. I come from a family of small-business owners. What I hear from business owners a lot in my riding is if we want them to be successful, if we want them to grow robust businesses and contribute to the Canadian economy, government should just do less. That's what I hear constantly from business.
I often question them on that and ask what they mean. What they mean is they totally agree that we need to get the balance right between environment and financial certainty. At the same time, though, there should be a robust process allowing businesses to be accountable for their decisions, but ultimately to make those decisions. We, as government, have a role to play in guaranteeing that the process is open, transparent, and ultimately accountable, but at the same time we allow those businesses the latitude to make decisions that are going to impact their bottom line and allow us to grow a world economy.
I want to get a bit of a sense from you how government can best assist small business in heading in that direction, in providing a framework, but ultimately allowing businesses to make those decisions on their own, and how you think that process could look.